Standing In More Than One World And Looking For My Feet

Sometimes I get my hands on a book that blocks out the incessant demands of all that beckons and pressures around and at me. Those things simply must wait as I descend into a world that is constructed entirely of words not my own.

David Bergen writes in violent, sensual imagery. Tempted to be offended, I am instead drawn into the images which depict loss, fear, desire, striving, and the search for redemption. There is love, selfishness, piety, honesty/dishonesty, disappointment, grief and joy. Drawn into the writing as I was, I spent a little time online reading about the author and his writing.

Wikipedia, that ever accurate and unquestioned source of all factual information; notes the following:

Raised as a Mennonite, Bergen has noted that the tendency of the church to stifle questions and criticism affected his decision to write fiction. "Writing is a way of figuring things out," he says. "If you can't ask certain questions in church, maybe you can ask them in fiction."

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I understand this in a way. Although I remain commited to my faith; my questions and fears about "the church" continue to rise like the Red in May. It saddens me that this is true, and I feel a profound sense of loss. However, my concern over raising my children in a church environment that feels more religious than honest; more contrived than raw, and more romaniticized than real is not a mistake I'm willing to charge into naively.

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Bergen easily draws me into his story, as he creates characters out of the people I brush up against in the bank, post office, and church foyer. He paints a picture of raw humanity- a picture in which I don't need to stretch my imagination even a little in order to place myself in "A Year of Lesser"'s setting. My own post office, credit union, and church foyer's walls emit the smells of souls who pass through them. Good, bad, sad, desparate people who want to be known. Who want to know something for sure.

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Being brutally honest, or even spinning a tale based on your own honest story is rife with risk. Telling a story which wells up from within but reveals the honest fears and questions of your own heart and experiences is welcoming vulnerability, criticism, misunderstanding, and disdain. Needing one another as desparately as we do; how many of us are willing to take such a risk? To fear coming out the other end disliked, pitied, or misinterpreted?

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Authors like Bergen disturb me with their imagery, their willingness to stand alone on their words and wait for praise or criticism, both of which become inevitable.

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It's a kind of bravery that makes me intrigued to learn more.

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(what are you reading?)