Traveling and Reading

I spent much of this past week on Portland attending a meeting of the United Methodist Commission on General Conference. I serve on the Commission and on the Rules Committee. I enjoy the people and appreciate the work.
The trip to Portland is a rather long one, and a benefit of long trips like this is the time they afford for reading – the time in the airport waiting, the time on the plane, and a little time in the evenings. My reading for the week was eclectic, as I like it.
Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood was first on the list. A reading group I convene is reading this novel. While I have owned a copy for awhile (it must be “for awhile” – the price on the cover is $2.95!), I had never read it. O’Connor, in an introductory note written ten years after the novel was first published in 1952 calls it a “comic novel,” and so it is, but darkly comic. The chief protagonist, Hazel Motes is a person haunted by Jesus and Christian faith. O’Connor writes in her introductory note: “That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death had been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence.” That illuminating introduction ends with these words: “Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery, and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.” Having read the novel, I was a little haunted myself, by the mystery of O’Connor’s work. So I read a couple of her short stories, packaged with the novel – “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” I look forward to discussing O’Connor’s work with others, to see if they too were haunted a bit.
I finished Wise Blood on the trip to Portland and brought only one other book along, a slim volume entitled Psychoanalysis and Moral Values by Heinz Hartmann. Hartmann’s essay seeks to describe “the complexities of moral reality which every application of moral principles has to consider” (19). The book is insightful, but after a strong dose of O’Connor, I was looking for something a little lighter, at least for a time.
Thankfully, the hotel I was staying at was near a bookstore, and this being spring, a good baseball book seemed like a wonderful idea. So I bought and read George Vecsey’s Baseball: a history of America’s favorite game. It was a delightful read, but not removed from the mysteries of freedom and morality. Baseball, being “America’s game” has mirrored some of the beauty and ugliness of our land. There is beauty in this game – wonder that humans create games at all, beauty in the combination of team and individual effort that is baseball, beauty in the history of the game and some of its legendary characters. But baseball has suffered under anti-Semitism, and more especially, racism. Vecsey hides none of this, and his chapter on Jackie Robinson reminded me of the enormous courage of that graceful and determined man.
I am also working my way through the Bible again, and found myself in both Luke and Ezra – an eclectic combination in itself - - - the power of Jesus presence, the hope as exiles return.
Life cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery which eclectic reading deepens, and for that I am grateful.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David