A Properly Focused Autobiographer

Augustine is a profound writer.

As I was reading Confessions, I felt as though I was finally old enough, or smart enough, to begin scanning this great and classic work. This was not the first time I had picked it up but it was the first time I finished it.

As I read, it became clear there was a reason this book sits on the list of must reads of not only Christian literature but also world history. At the very least, Augustine started a new form of literature: autobiography. But where so often a first run of something is only a husk of the future form, Augustine gives us the completed excellence while future attempts, by later autobiographers, seem to pale in comparison.

The Original Biographer

The original autobiography, by Augustine, was not a typical walkthrough of the life of the author but instead a prayer to the God he so completely wants to glorify. Unlike many autobiographies, Augustine puts his focus on God. There is much talk of himself but it is thoroughly within a conversation with God.

What is astounding is that Augustine just sits in that understanding. In fact, toward the end of the book he does not wax eloquent about himself after the turning point in his life (like the typical form of most autobiographies after) but instead focuses his attention on God and what he is doing in time and space.

This is the proper relationship each of us should have. Our autobiographies would be incomplete, lacking, if only an isolated look at ourselves apart from a proper relationship with God. 

A Desire to Worship God

Augustine is listed as one of the church fathers for a reason and it is enriching to read his story and start to focus on what he focuses on. He is very good at drawing our gaze to God even when he is talking about himself.

Augustine cannot help himself from worshiping God in the text. He will talk about his past and then he will worship, the presence and nature of sin and then worship, the quality of plays and oration and then worship. Science. Worship. The stars. Worship. His mother. Worship. The very nature of time. Worship. 

While reading I was invited to consider the glory of God for myself and, ultimately, to worship him for his goodness.

Read Augustine

Augustine is brilliant. Many in the church, on many sides, quote him, or attack him, but I wonder how many have read him. He is worth conversing with. Listen to his thoughts and try to follow along as he plumbs the depth of any number of topics. You will be the better for it.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville gave us a narrative warning about obsession that was itself an obsession. While he gives us a story about a particular whale, Melville is clearly enamored with all details of the whales from every species. Before we even meet the main whale of the narrative, we are given details on the tails, the skulls, the bones, and oil of whales. Melville uses his obsessive details as a package to deliver the stories of two other obsessions.

Moby Dick, the whale antagonist of the novel by the same name, is the vindictive obsession of Captain Ahab. Once unburdened of a leg by the seemingly immortal behemoth, he risks the lives of his entire crew (and the well beings of their families) for the chance to end the life of the whale.

One of his crew, Ishmael, is a sea-loving, whale-admiring employee. He jumped on board to revel in the majesties of the whales. His obsession, if it can be classified as such, is a wholesome one that marvels at nature and its grandness. From the beginning he is itching to push out to sea and finds himself daydreaming in the crow's nest. In Ishmael, we have modeled a proper focus.

The rest of the crew is a fun-loving and hilarious bunch. For a while, I was certain I was reading the wrong book. Moby Dick has always been portrayed as a brooding narrative but for more then three quarters of the telling I was enjoying a comedic account of a whaling crew complete with a pipe-smoking mate that doesn't know he is being insulted and a cook who dabbles in preaching to sharks.

This crew, that shows us the enjoyment of life, is finally brought into ultimate danger by their captain who has placed all focus and meaning of his own life unto one end: the slaying of his foe.

It is in the final fifty pages that I realized I was reading a dark warning against vengeance (or any other unhealthy obsession or addiction)

There is a small flicker of hope when Ahab remembers his life and his family and all the goodness at home. He realizes what he could be sacrificing but throws it all away, for him and his crew, when he sees the fabled white whale cross the horizon.

Starbuck, the first mate, has the sternest warning, "Thou has outraged me, not insulted me, Sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man."

Ahab does not heed the warning and the parable of unhealthy obsession is finished with an end at the bottom of the ocean. Life and laughter is extinguished.

Melville gives us an effective warning we should all heed: We all hold the potential of our own destruction and often, tragically the lives of those around us.

The Road

The Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Cormac McCarthy put me in a state of fear and uncertainty. As I followed the characters on their journey through a post-apocalyptic world, punctuated by lack of provision and potentially dangerous people, I sympathized with the father's fear as he tried to sustain his son's life despite the lack of any "long term goals".

On my reading, the backdrop of the ravaged world serves only to bring to narrow focus the relationship between father and son. There is danger and uncertainty but it is there to allow the protagonists to work through it. The reason for the danger and uncertainty is irrelevant. We do not know if there was war, natural disaster or aliens, but the characters are left in a diminished place and their relationship will be examined within it. 

Preserving life because it is valuable, because "we carry the flame", seems to be the theme of this narrative. (I must note that a fellow reader did not agree with this assessment. A lively conversation ensued.) The father almost seems to trudge through this duty in a perfunctory fashion while his son serves as an exemplary agent in perpetuating life and grace to others. This is a curious and welcome change as the usual generational progression is from belief to assumption to rejection.

There seemed to be little redeeming quality to the narrative as their journey seemed, at times, pointless and only prolonging the inevitable but I, albeit against my fellow debator, feel the end of The Road points to the reason for traveling in the first place. Because of this I would recommend reading the narrative  

As a recent father, it was easy for me to slip into the fear and uncertainty of the protagonist. It was worthwhile feeling those feelings in that dismal setting and walk through questions that only that backdrop would require. It is all the better because I can pull out of the book and be at home and happily realize I have no Road to walk down with my boy. 

Our Town

What first seems to be a capsule of reminder of quintessential small town charm (Mayberry before there was Mayberry), evolves into inditement to the general human who does not take time to watch the little moments of life take place before them.

Wilder gives the weight of a scene not to the background and the material but to the people and the interactions between them. The preparing and sharing of breakfast, the walking and talking on the way home from school, the conversations that occur solely before a wedding, and the gossip between fellow choir members. This is the stuff of life, for Wilder, and the pieces we often miss when we are too focused on the eating of breakfast, the studying, and the getting married before we carry on with life.

The reminder from Wilder is helpful and needed but the direction to which he points seems to be only close to the mark while hitting the ideal target.

His view of the afterlife leaves the dead emotionless and looking back at the small happenings of life with a dead pan regret. The eternality of the soul does not rest in a state glorying in the reason for its eternality but instead is relegated to the position of a sentry only able to see what has been missed.

This play gives no hope even though it calls for a change in perspective. Even if we heed the warning of Wilder we are left, in the end, with the satisfaction that we paid attention while we shared eggs and coffee with the ones we love.

I need more reason for embracing life than an assurance that the little things were embraced appropriately. Life is a big thing with big reasons and by that truth I can be shaken alert during my routines and schedule and realize life has an end that can be glorious. I can live that truth even in our town.

Coleridge: The Glory in the Everyday

Coleridge: a lord of the 19th century spending a fair amount of his time writing poetic masterpieces like Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Much enjoyment can be found in his stories like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Cristabel but I was enamored by his various descriptions and observations of the world around him.

He describes the comfortable place of his convalescence as a hindering force in This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison. He waxes eloquent to the steeper of tea after its failing in Monody on a Tea Kettle. The beauty of rest and sleep under the trees is described in a enveloping way in Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement.

Often times, or the presupposition was held, that poets push their words toward the transcendent and the surreal or the reach for the greater things in our existence: love and beauty. But often Coleridge seemed to find something wonderful and glorious while walking along the road or enduring a typical day. It was as though he found the colors more fitting colors to paint the scene. Where one would typically expect to see greys he glossed with vibrant arrays.

Poetry is not a genre I am well versed in, unless one were to count the lyrics of music, but I willingly gave Coleridge a book's worth of reading and engagement. I was at first uncertain and not a little lost but I finished thrilled at his use of words and descriptions of the everyday, but nonetheless, beautiful scenes.

Dinosaurs and Belief

Walter Alvarez wrote T. Rex and the Crater of Doom to tell the story of his and his team's search for geological evidence of the event that wiped out the dinosaurs.  

Written at a popular level, it gave basic explanations of geological terms and ideas (much of which would have been over my head if written technically) so it could focus more on the story of what was framed as a search for truth. 

While reading a secular science book, I anticipated a certain disdain for Christianity or perhaps a pervasive, mild dishonesty in the representation of evidence. All of these presuppositions were residual from years of hearing a caricature of the science community from the worldview-defending church. 

Instead, I found three laudable things 

1) A desire to find truth that was worth emulating 

I was enamored by the intense desire to find the answers and recognized it as a shared quality I have with the author. Walter, and crew, spent decades searching, digging, hypothesizing, testing, retesting, failing, and finding in order to arrive at truth. That intense drive for answers inspires me as I invest in my own searching and study.

2) A willingness to point out assumptions  

There were multiple times in the book where something was asserted and I thought, "I don't know if that is true" or more simply "I think that is taken on faith." Alvarez diligently flagged these portions by saying, "we assume." That is respectable and laudable. When we are talking about things we have not seen it is important to say that we are basing our progression of thought on things that we assume or believe have happened.

3) The humility to say, "we don't know"

At the end of the book, and the end of the search, Alvarez says, "No one yet understands how a deeply buried crater can control the pattern of springs far above it..." He also notes that, "Evolution had not provided impact resistance for the mammals either, but somehow they did survive. No one knows why..." But of these are key parts of the narrative he lays out and he risked dismantling his premise by including them.

While I may disagree with some of the premises Alvarez holds I can applaud his willingness to say that he is uncertain how key pieces of his story actually happen. It is a humility I ought to practice.

While geology is not the most interesting topic, I found the book interesting and I was pleased to dig up the previous nuggets. Have you read any science books lately? What did you find?

Alvarez, Walter (2013-06-25). "T. rex" and the Crater of Doom (Princeton Science Library). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.