Reading the Greats—or not

Feeling literary? Looking for inspiration? Tune in to the EBA’s conversation with Marilynne Robinson on Thursday, October 14, 6 p.m. Central, as this Great Author discusses her latest novel, Jack.

Have you read Moby Dick?

It’s not a trick question. I just wonder sometimes how many people have really read it, versus how many just read the CliffsNotes for a high school English test, or how many just say they’ve read it because everyone has. Or thinks they should have.

When I was younger and trying to be literary, when faced with the have-you-read question regarding a popular, controversial, or classic book, I would make a non-committal Mmmm or Hmmm—not an untruth, but a sound that could be interpreted as yes, or as I’m pondering what I might say to you about this significant work. 

The world is different now, and no one is expected to have read anyone else’s booklist. There is no longer a canon, a list of classics that render you uneducated if you have not read them to the point of quotability. Yet somehow, when recently faced with the question “Have you read Marilynne Robinson? Would you review Jack?” I found myself wishing I had steeped myself in her previous novels, wanting to be a person who had, and tempted to make a vague, disingenuous noise. 

I, too, am different now, so I admitted that I had not, in fact, read the previous ones. Many people whose taste in books resonates with mine have loved these books and recommended them, but I missed the boat when Gilead was published; over the intervening years, I got busy reading newer, shinier titles. But considering Jack, I thought taking the plunge into the fourth of the four would at least get me started with this esteemed collection. If I sank with my lack of perspective and needed to get on more solid footing, I could revert to old bad habits from my days of literary pretension and save myself by reading reviews, (or, God forbid, Cliffs Notes) to fill the gaps in my understanding.

To my delight, I discovered that Jack is so deftly constructed that no knowledge of the previous novels was necessary. Elements of the back story that readers need to make sense of the eponymous main character emerge naturally, the way we might recall part of our own story as new experiences cause us to reminisce or fret about encounters in the past.

Jack, the prodigal son of Reverend Robert Boughton, was born in Gilead, Iowa, with clouds from a dark realm surrounding him. To polite, too talented, and too difficult to pin down with rules or mores or even minimal expectations as a child, when this novel opens, he has become a vagrant in post WWII St. Louis. He’s out of jail for a crime he didn’t commit, but admits he could have, and he’s trying to deal with just being Jack without hurting — or connecting with — anyone else. That’s a big challenge, as trouble manifests around him even when he is most desperately trying to be harmless. Jack is a gifted man: literary, philosophical, musically inclined, well-mannered. He seems only able to use these talents sardonically, which has earned him the nickname Slick.

When Slick meets Della, the warm, intelligent, and upright daughter of an A.M.E. bishop, his carefully constructed world of avoidance and non-connection is radically changed. Recognizing that the persona he has created (or that Fate has created for him) is destructive to Della’s respectable life, he tries to stay away from her. But she has seen through his dark façade and has recognized a soul mate. 

Being a soul mate has no bearing in pre-Civil Rights America, where all that the heartbreaking majority of people on both sides of the racial divide can see is that there is no place, physically, legally, or morally, for a white man and a black woman to have a committed relationship. 

The book is told completely from Jack’s point of view. Della materializes for the reader though extensive dialogue. Both characters, as well as her family, who appear in the narrative, and his, who do not, still come clearly to life. Page after page contains wisdom about the human condition, and in the end, though it is difficult to see it coming after every hard thing that happens, there is room for grace. A nuanced, real, and surprisingly fresh grace. Much like grace appears in our broken world, even today.

Have I read Marilynne Robinson? I’m working on it. After reading Jack, I am eager to read the previous Gilead books. Do I regret reading them out of order? No more than I regret hearing my family stories in overlapping, circuitous ways, where the same story can have a different moral depending on the times, the teller, or the circumstances. No more than I regret having read the Gospel in a piecemeal fashion over the years. Robinson has created a profound world, and wherever we choose to enter it, it makes sense, or it doesn’t, in just the way our real lives—on earth, in the mind, and of the spirit—do. 

If you have read Robinson’s previous books, of course you must read Jack to discover how this bittersweet character spent his prodigal years. And if you haven’t read them, still read Jack. It’s a timely story from the Gilead universe, and it resonates with the racial reconciliation work we are doing now. Though it seems like there is no hope for Della and Jack, there is grace. And though we see ourselves mired in unresolvable tensions now, seeing how far we have come since the time in which their story is set provides hope that perhaps further progress can be made, and further grace experienced.  

And Moby Dick? As for me and my reading list, it may never surface.

To register for the EBA Author Series Conversation with Marilynne Robinson, click here.

To purchase Jack from the Cathedral Bookstore, click here.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
~Martin Luther King Jr.

Putting the Pieces Back Together

Lots of people wring their hands and say the church is broken. The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers explains why and suggests how we can fix it.

If you’ve been spending Sundays watching church on Zoom and hoping that things will just get back to normal, the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers’ new book The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community will shake you up. Rev. Spellers, who serves as Presiding Bishop Curry’s Canon for Evangelism, Reconciliation, and Creation, realized that the painful social upheavals that boiled over during the summer of 2020 offered the opportunity for the church, and specifically the Episcopal Church, to get away from the empire-oriented, exclusive practices that were alienating people and causing the church to decline and to move towards something more sustaining, more like what Jesus’ first followers experienced. In just two months she wrote this short, direct book that focuses her education and experience on hard truths of the church, past and present, and what they might mean for the future.

Nadia Bolz-Weber explains The Church Cracked Open well: “If you are looking at the landscape of the church and wondering ‘How’d we get here’ and ‘what’s next,’ I invite you to board Rev. Spellers’ plane and take in the big picture with her. Take in the history, the theology, the pain, the beauty and the hope that her view from thirty-thousand feet offers. When she lands the plane, you’ll realize—there’s simply no better guide out there.”

Spellers introduces her powerful treatise with the story in Mark’s gospel about the woman at Bethany who came into the house of Simon the leper with an alabaster jar of nard, costly perfumed ointment, which she broke and poured onto Jesus’ head. Everyone was angry at her for wasting the precious substance and breaking the beautiful jar, but Jesus understood that she recognized something the others didn’t: “she was literally giving up the best of what she had—the alabaster jar and the nard—because he mattered that much to her. He was the holy one, the center of her world, and she had reoriented her life around him as her focus.”

There is no denying that the world as we know it cracked open this past year. And Spellers provides powerful evidence that the church as we know it was in quick and serious decline, cracked and broken even before the pandemic. In eight chapters, she explains why and provides a plan for using the broken pieces of our tradition to orient our lives more truly around Jesus and come closer to creating beloved community. 

She begins by explaining why “Euro-tribal” churches have fallen to the margins. Rather than seeing the crises of the pandemic as the final blows to an ailing church, she says, we should use them as motivation to move away from White empire towards God and God’s dream. Spellers is very direct about how the Episcopal Church historically embraced and often epitomized racism, but her abiding love for the broken church comes through clearly. 

After she names the problems and explains how they evolved, she moves towards imagining a better future, sharing the stories of men and women throughout history who lived better lives and provide hope that we can too. She explores the idea of kenosis, the non-attachment and self-giving that Jesus exemplified, and explains how we need to be brave enough to break our attachment to the alabaster jar of our church. She proposes a life of solidarity, where Christian communities who once identified with empire and establishment walk humbly with the oppressed to find salvation and holiness for all. And she brings these stories and concepts together by explaining the Way of Love —the rule of life for Episcopalians that the presiding bishop has developed —through their lens.

Spellers hopes this book will inspire more than just deeper reflection. “My fervent prayer is that you will examine your life and the life of your church, and the systems and assumptions that shape both. I hope you will become less anxious about how you and your community are cracking open and more curious about how God might remake you as a true community of love.”

The Church Cracked Open packs a wallop. Though it’s short, it’s not an easy read— her deep understanding of the church and its history can get dense for a lay reader, and many of the anecdotes she shares are ugly and uncomfortable to face. But through these hard truths, she weaves poetry, specific hopes, and examples of people who have overcome the ugliness to provide images of what the future might look like. She leaves us not with the broken pieces of the church, but with a clear plan for how they might be put back together to create something truly beautiful and precious, something worthy of honoring God. Whether or not you agree with her diagnosis or her recovery plan for the church, you’ll discover profound new ways of considering what the return to church might look like. And you’ll understand why it can’t just go back to normal.

For a link to join the Episcopal Booksellers Association Authors Series conversation with the Rev. Canon Spellers on Thursday, May 13, at 6:00 p.m. Central, click here.

To purchase The Church Cracked Open from the Cathedral bookstore, click here.

The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community
Stephanie Spellers
Church Publishing 
Paperback: 160 pages
ISBN: 978-1640654242
$16.95

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
~Ursula K. Le Guin