Letters for the Road: September 2020

On Large and Small Things

Dear reader, 

I’ve recently discovered the modern Welsh poet R.S. Thomas. His language opens up the world, drawing attention to the depths and beauty of ordinary life. An Anglican priest, Thomas begins one poem by identifying himself: “I was vicar of large things / in a small parish.” I’ve turned that sentence over in my mind in the past month, struck by its beauty and perception. He recognizes the true smallness of a village parish, in relation to the rest of the world, in relation to the large cities that concentrate influence and power. He neither denigrates nor flatters.

Instead, he identifies what the upwardly mobile and power-brokers of our world miss: that despite the smallness of a place, despite its relative insignificance on the world stage, small places are nonetheless home to “large things.” Our mistake is to assume that small places shrink everything within them, reducing the minds, souls, loves, griefs, and suffering of those who live in them. Their stories usually remain untold, but this does not render them trivial. Thomas understands this, refusing to call them “small-minded” — 

there were depths
in some of them I shrank back
from, wells that the word “God”
fell into and died away,
and for all I know is still
falling.

The word vicar is related to the word vicarious, and the original idea was that a vicar served as God’s earthly representative. In a sense, then, we are all vicars — part of our role as image bearers is to represent him, to bear God’s image to the world. And yet, I often feel that my work is the inversion of Thomas’ phrase — that I care for small things in a large world. The world feels so, so large, and I feel engulfed by its size, overwhelmed by the enormity of it. In comparison, I feel small and my work feels even smaller.   

What is small, and what is large, and how can we know the difference? Our world suffocates us with information, conveying the sense that everything is of utmost and urgent importance. Through social media, the voices of celebrities, cultural icons, and the movers-and-shakers of our world are able to press into our mundane lives. Through their narratives, the spectacular grips our imaginations. 

In The Selfless Way of Christ, Henri Nouwen observes that the second temptation that Jesus faced, to throw himself down from the temple, confronts us as well: 

It is difficult for us to believe that something very good came from an unknown place. It is difficult for us to believe that our God is a God who came in the unspectacular form of a servant, who entered Jerusalem on an ass, and who was killed as a common criminal...To be spectacular is so much our concern that we, who have been spectators most of our lives, can hardly conceive that what is unknown, unspectacular, and hidden can have any value.

To our imaginations, distorted by transient values of success and accomplishment, large and small become distorted as well, and we are unable to see accurately both our own size and the size of the people and places around us. We inflate and shrink; neither brings us nearer the truth. 

Because, after all, size is not the key. For Thomas, the crucial part of his truly seeing his village parishioners was looking with eyes of love. How else can we see things as they really are? 

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The definition and creation of beauty has been on my mind as I prepare for a series of studies that I’m co-leading on the topic of beauty. One of the most insightful voices in the current discussion of beauty and theology is Makoto Fujimura, particularly his articulation of “kintsugi theology.” Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese art that involves taking broken pieces of pottery and mending them, not by trying to hide the brokenness, but by embellishing the seams with gold, silver, or other precious materials. In this video from Rokujigen Kintsugi Studio, artists used the art of kintsugi to represent the borders between neighbouring countries. I love the imagination behind the project, and its picture of the redemption and healing that God works in us and in the world through the wounds of his own son. 

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I’m still plugging away at Augustine’s City of God. Can I admit that I’ve skipped a few sections? The ones where he is toppling Roman gods and goddesses — they were a struggle. My dad started reading it as well, but he is more principled than I: he refuses to skip anything. I do have a gem for you: “Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?” (Book IV.4).

I started reading Chaim Potok’s The Chosen months ago, but only in the past couple of weeks have I gained much momentum. The main character (a Jewish boy growing up in 1930’s New York) painfully faces the reality of being hated simply for being Jewish, and as many of those who hate him claim the name of Jesus, I was reminded of Dorothy Day’s observation: “We love God as much as the one we love the least.” Wise, piercing words. 

I’m only two chapters into Kelly Kapic’s Embodied Hope: Theological Reflections on Pain and Suffering, but I love it already — his pastoral tone, and his desire to bring body and soul together rather than pit them against one another. 

The boys and I read Soft Rain: A Story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears as an extension of our history studies. I hadn’t read it before, but the library had it on Kindle, so we went with it. The boys were quickly drawn into the story, and I wrote a lament for us to use as we read. I also finished Soong-Chan Rah’s book Prophetic Lament, and it became a springboard for a reflection on the importance of the lament psalms. 

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from Housework: “To speak of housework as domestic work obscures our dependence on houses: that all of us, unless houseless by misfortune or by choice, have some specific building where our bed sits, right now, made or unmade; the place where we are, at the end of the day, housed. It obscures our dependence on other human beings, the necessity that someone, somewhere, is doing what it is necessary to do (the laundry, the dishes, the floors, the toilets) for all the houses and for the residents who require their houses to be in working order. When both the house and the workers are hidden in this way, our dependence on dwelling is hidden indeed.”

from The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon: “Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences. It can cost him time and effort, but it pays handsomely...But if man’s attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him — every time he substitutes a conceit for a fact — he gets grease all over the kitchen. Reality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods — to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things.”

from Matthew Lee Anderson’s newsletter, reflecting on Jerry Falwell: “And then there was simply the personal dimension: the recognition that the same burden of judgment lies upon me as is on Falwell. There was within that moment a new energy to repent—not of sins of the same kind, necessarily, but of all my sins. How could the envy that I have harbored stand any longer? How could the pride and indignation at people I find unreasonable continue to mark me? When we truly encounter someone else’s sin as sin, we invariably become alive to our own” (emphasis mine).

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After I made the decision to include recipes in this letter, I realized I’d have to branch out to avoid linking to Smitten Kitchen every single month! So here is a new recipe for us, and one that I’ll happily make again: Coconut-Braised Chicken. Until I made it, I had avoided lemongrass because 1) I didn’t know what it looks like (yes, yes, I know I could have googled it. Sometimes those silly excuses still do function as real barriers). 2) I thought it would be tricky to find. But as it turns out the local grocery store has it! And after I did a quick search on their website I found a photo and location, and I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to wander the aisles in exasperation. If you’ve never used lemongrass, I wish you the same ease of obtaining it. 

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O Lord, you who told us that we would have trouble in this world, 
we confess to you our worries over things that we cannot control, 
our distress over things that seem wrongheaded, 
and our frustration with those who oppose us on things that we hold dearly. 
Grant us the ability to bear with one another in love, 
and may the peace of Christ guard our hearts, 
so that together we might trust your leading 
and walk in the way of unity that only the Spirit of God can make possible. 
Amen.

from 11 Back-to-School Prayers by W. David O. Taylor

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On the road with you, 

Laura 

P.S. This is still new for me, so I want to say again that I would love to hear back from you — please don’t feel shy! I am so grateful for those of you who responded in some way last month. You can reply in the public comments on the substack site, or message me privately at laura@thecebuses.com. And if you enjoyed what you read, won’t you share the joy by forwarding to a friend? xx