Reading Challenge, Book 2

The second book of Tim Challies’ reading challenge for 2019 is a novel. My instinct is to say that I don’t ordinarily read novels, but upon a little reflection, that’s not accurate. I read novels to my children constantly. Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather books, S.D. Smith’s Green Ember series, Brian Jacques’s Redwall series, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings triology, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, etc. So I suppose I read a lot of novels. I don’t know why this category in the reading challenge felt alien. Possibly it was because it was going to be a book I read outside of the context of reading to my children.

I read Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2000).

Between the dedication and first chapter there is a malediction of sorts, where the author pronounces this curse: “…persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise ‘understand’ it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.”

I will do my best to avoid drawing such an interesting fate in this post.

It was a book that touched me because I have loved a town fading into time, like Jayber Crow’s Port William. Streets of empty buildings in the middle of a beautiful nowhere. I have loved the few people still hanging on there, and did my best for a decade to serve them as I could. Once upon a time I imagined that, in an ideal situation, I would one day be buried in its cemetery just south of town. Berry’s imaginary Port William and its fading away before modernity felt like the last time I drove away from my beloved ghost town, glancing back in the rearview mirror driving through the pass, leaving that broad, mostly empty desert valley behind. Jayber Crow repeatedly wrestles with this loss…the loss of people and their stories, their memories…loss of a way of life that knew community…loss…

“It is not a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that the world is always passing and irrecoverable, to be known only in loss” (pg. 329).

“All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be” (pg. 139).

I have loved one, and am thankful it is invisible.

The titular character struggles with questions about the Scriptures throughout. His first engagement with questioning left me incredulous as I was reading. How many times have I heard the tale of a person so smart in their skepticism that they were told by “church people” to quit asking questions? Ah, the stereotypical unfulfilled seeker rejected by the question-fearing religious zombies. I’ve met folks who boasted that this is what they were. Smarter than the stupid Sunday School teacher of their youth. Throwing questions at fearful preachers who couldn’t handle the brilliance of the opposition. Sigh. I've never told someone not to ask a question, and I've never heard of another church teacher doing it, either. When I’ve been asked questions I’ve worked hard to provide a helpful answer. I can’t think of a single time when a question has been asked that I didn't try to give a coherent answer from the Scriptures (hoping that the questioner could see the answer for themselves in the Book). So, Jayber’s struggle irritated me a little. Curiously, one of the very questions he asked was one I was answering in a Wednesday evening Bible study while reading this book.

To be fair, Jayber continued in church attendance, continued to read his Bible, and quoted it rightly at times.

Berry’s writing style was beautiful to me. I admire a writer who can create a vivid world through his words. The description of nature shows a man who loves it. As I’ve said, I highlight whatever I am reading. Even in this novel, there were so many good phrases, sentences, paragraphs that were well-written, wise, or moving. I can’t – won’t – include even a small percentage of the beauty. I can’t come anywhere near the descriptive passages in my own writing, but echo the sentiment of always looking.

“Port William repaid watching. I was always on the lookout for what would be revealed. Sometimes nothing would be, but sometimes I beheld astonishing sights” (pg. 5).

“I try not to let good things go by unnoticed” (pg. 323). I often hear the Rich Mullins’ lyric in my head, “there’s so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see – but everywhere I go I’m looking.”

“The preachers were always young students from the seminary who wore, you might say, the mantle of power but not the mantle of knowledge…they learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works – although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest” (pg. 160).

He spends a lot of time reflecting on Jesus’ words to love our enemies. It remains a struggle most of the book.

“Did I think the great organizations of the world could love their enemies? I did not. I didn’t think great organizations could love anything” (pg. 143).

There are plenty of great insights into the reality of human pride.

“He seemed to have no instinct for the making much of oneself that complaining requires” (pg. 263).

In addition to being the town barber, Jayber took on the role of grave-digger. As someone who has attended a decent share of funerals, his reflections resonated with me in some ways.

“As I buried the dead and walked among them, I wanted to make my heart as big as Heaven to include them all and love them and not be distracted. I couldn’t do it, of course, but I wanted to” (pg. 158).

“And then, when the last of the living had gone away, I mended back the ground” (pg. 267).

He struggles with the prayer of the Lord in the Garden; the fact that it appears to Jayber not to be answered is one of the reasons he walks away from seminary. Later in life, still thinking about that unanswered prayer, he concludes (in part), “that He knew it could not be granted showed His divinity; that He prayed it anyhow showed His mortality” (pg. 253). Prayer, too, is a motif of Jayber’s life.

This was a touching story. Long, a little slow, and, when it was over, I wished it weren’t. That’s appropriate, I suppose, since it was the story of a life, and that’s how life often goes.

“Back there at the beginning, as I see now, my life was all time and almost no memory…and now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time” (pg. 24).

For the first two books of this reading challenge, I now realize I have unintentionally read two biographies – one of Geerdhardus Vos, and another of a fictional man named Jayber Crow. Both lived in a very broken world and sought the right, loved, lived in an imperfect community, and longed for heaven. By the way, I decided on Jayber Crow because the person recommending it said they were moved to make a significant life decision for their family because of the sense of community described in the book. Community is something I regularly hear people want and hunger for in this age that fragments us so much. I confess a bit of skepticism about that. Community means accountability, takes selfless time and investment in others, and means gracefully accommodating people who are different from us within the collectively accepted boundaries of community. I'd be delighted to see my skepticism dashed.

As I move to the third book, it’ll wait a few weeks. I’ve gotten ahead of schedule and will be happy to let these two biographies settle awhile in my mind before moving on.