Southernmost

At university, I took a course in religion with a professor who was ordained and had studied under Karl Barth. He told me that students come into his class with a naive belief and what he taught shook them for they had never viewed their faith community and beliefs from the 'outside'. And, the professor continued, perhaps they will later return to their church and reaffirm it, this time with a deeper kind of faith.

But letting go of what one is taught, the beliefs held by one's community is rare and hard. I watched church leaders endeavor to destroy a church over their perceptions of the denomination's Social Principles as approving sin. It is more common for people to destroy what they fear than to change what they believe. 

"None of us can know the mind of God. He's too big for that." Rev. Asher in Southernmost

I was drawn to read Southernmost by Silas House because it is about an Evangelical pastor who realizes that his narrow understanding of what God requires has created hate and bigotry, casting some into the outer darkness, and thus impairing his own soul.

When a flood leaves a gay couple homeless, Asher invites them into his house, a holy hospitality which his wife cannot tolerate. Asher has felt guilt over participating in his family's and community's condemnation of his brother Luke when he came out as gay.  When the gay couple comes to worship, Asher tries to lead his flock and his family to an understanding of love and hospitality, but they are recalcitrant. He can only move on, leaving his church and his wife.

Asher's wife Lydia keeps their son hostage, insistent that only she can raise him in the right values now that Asher has 'gone crazy'. In fact, she has been so fearful that gayness runs in the family, she rejects her son's sensitivity and non-violence. Unable to bear separation from his son, Asher rashly kidnaps him, then travels south to the Florida Keys to find his estranged brother. It is time to make amends for his sins.

Asher buys a moment in time alone with his son but knows it can't be sustained. He has to return his son home and face the consequences, hoping his wife will be merciful and not vengeful.

The pacing of the novel is like a symphony that starts with an Allegro and immediate action, then settling into a slower Adagio before rising to a fast-moving Scherzo, and finally, resolves in the manner of Tchaikovsky with a slower, more internalized, final movement.

I was interested by the characters' grappling with what God requires of us.

And what does the Lord require of you except to be just, and to love  kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

"Hebrews says to entertain strangers," Asher tells Lydia. "Love the sinner, hate the sin," she responds. "You've gotten belief confused with judgment," Asher responds; "They are our neighbors."

Lydia holds steadfast to what she had been taught, resisting a changing world that tells her what she knows is wrong is now normal. She believes keeping Justin from Asher is a battle for her son's soul.

Asher has come to doubt everything he grew up accepting; "I have been on the road to Damascus," he thinks. His eyes have been opened. Paul had persecuted the Christians, and struck blind on the Damascus road saw the truth and converted to Christianity. Asher's rejection of gays, including his own brother, was blindness. "You can use the Word to judge and condemn people or you can use it to love them." Judging his brother became the seed of doubt in his faith.

Justin has his own faith, a sensitivity for the divine, seeing God in the Everything. Forgiveness is the easiest thing in the world, he believes. Forgetting is the hard part. Justin sees the greater truths and offers us a faith that transcends human institutions.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.


Southernmost
by Silas House
Algonquin Books
Pub Date 05 Jun 2018
ISBN 9781616206253
PRICE $26.95 (USD)

Final note: Luke tells Asher that he spend time in Grand Haven, Michigan, "in winter the most lonesome place I've seen." Amen! We spent one winter in an even smaller Lake Michigan resort town up the coast from Grand Haven. In winter the businesses closed--except for the bars and a small grocery store that was half open. The houses around us were empty, summer homes. You could walk down the middle of the streets. It was one lonesome place.

The Heart's Invisible Fury by John Boyne

A novel can be transformative, for it has the ability to condense our experience and reflect what we knew back in a way that we recognize as true while enlarging our understanding and engaging our heart.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne tells the life story of Cyril Avery, spanning seventy years between 1945 and 2015. It is the story of a young man growing up, a good but passive man who is not allowed to be a real son, an honest friend, who makes mistakes and survives horrible losses. In the end he discovers his true identity and is able to rectify relationships.

The story has its terrifying and violent moments. The dark humor brought out-loud laughter. And it has sorrows that brought tears to my eyes.

It is a compassionate book. It is a work which unsparingly attacks hypocrisy and double standards in society and the church. The worst people can do, the violence and hate crimes and prejudice is all revealed. As is forgiveness, understanding, and the vision of a state of being that will recompense our earthly losses.

I was totally unprepared for this book when I chose it as my Blogging for Books read. It was one of those happy accidents of a book finding its right reader.

The novel opens in Ireland at a time when the church controls social mores and with a harsh hand ferrets out illicit sexual activity, unwed teens and homosexuals especially.

Cyril Avery, 'not a real Avery' his adoptive father reminds him, was born to an unwed mother who was rejected by her family and parish. His birth came in a moment of terror. His self-absorbed adotpive parents gave him a home but no affection, yet he loved and accepted them. His childhood and university friend Julian was beautiful, brash, and self assured. Julian, like his father and like Cyril's father, was sexually promiscuous from an early age. He became the secret object of Cyril's affection, which Cyril does not reveal until the morning he was to marry Julian's sister.

"What was I even doing here? Years of regret and shame began to overwhelm me. A lifetime of lying, of feeling that I was being forced to lie, had led me to a moment where I was not only preparing to destroy my own life but also that of a girl who had done nothing whatsoever to deserve it."

I recalled a minister friend from long ago, smart and fun and capable, and his wife who like me was an English major at university. At annual conference we would met up and talk. Years passed and the wife was expecting their first child. The husband told her that he was in love with someone else and that he was gay. Our denomination would not appoint a homosexual, and to this day will not appoint a homosexual unless they are celibate. So, he had married a woman he loved deeply, and pretended to love her sexually as well. It was devastating, the wife faced with raising a child as a single mother, the husband waiting to hear if his career would be taken away. What that taught me was not to hate my friend but the evil that forced him to deny who he was, unable to live honestly and wholly.

"I can't excuse my actions," Cyril tells Julian's sister years later, "but I didn't have the courage or maturity to be honest with myself, let alone anyone else."

And I recalled another friend, a young man grappling with his sexuality during the early days of AIDS, whose self loathing and fear of family rejection kept him not only closeted but even dating. In these days, a woman told me she hated picking up a phone that had been used by another gay friend,  an otherwise intelligent woman.  Boyne's book addresses this too, as Cyril volunteers to visit AIDS victims and experiences the hatred and blame put on gays for the disease.

Near the end of his life, Cyril meets his birth mother and learns his story. "Maybe there were no villains in my mother's story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing."

His mother looks at her home village's graveyard and says, "All these people. And all of that trouble. And look, they're dead now. So what did it all matter in the end?" She wonders, "Why did they abandon me? Why do we abandon each other? Why did I abandon you?"

Why do we allow ourselves to be led into hate and violence? How can we look at a son or daughter, a friend or schoolmate, and allow some idea to alienate us, so we do not see the person we know but a vision of something frightening?

In the flawed, humane, and tempest-tossed Cyril perhaps we will recognize we are all fallen creatures tyring to just get through life, hoping for a moment's affection and love.

I received a free book through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Heart's Invisible Furies
John Boyne
Hogarth Books
$28 hard cover
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6078-6