In the novel "Stone Yard Devotional" by Australian author Charlotte Wood, a failed environmental activist joins a community of tired nuns in a dreary part of the Australian outback. In the midst of a plague of mice, the remains of a former sister of the convent, murdered many years ago while working with abused women in Southeast Asia, are being returned to the community. Accompanying the remains is a celebrity nun with a reputation as a firebrand for human rights. Between the mice, the red tape involving the reception and interment of the remains, and the disruptive presence of the famous Sister Helen Parry, the nuns experience a turmoil that rattles the routine of work and prayer.
In a much different book, Lulu Miller, science writer for NPR, explores the life of David Starr Jordan, Stanford University's first president, taxonomist, ichthyologist, possible murder accessory, and eugenicist. "Why Fish Don't Exist" is sparked by Miller's own depression which she traces to her scientist father's cheerful assurances from the time she was a child that life is meaningless. Miller believes that learning about Jordan, whose devotion to taxonomy and ideas about evolution uncovering universal patterns of truth in the cosmos, will be an anodyne to this meaninglessness.
These events cause the unnamed narrator to ponder how she has ended up in late middle age among the community of nuns whose Roman Catholicism she herself rejected decades ago. She is not interested in the spiritual life of the nunnery so much as a moral life, a life in which her carbon footprint is as small as possible. At times, one wonders if she hopes to shrink her footprint to nothing in an almost Buddhist desire for oblivion. And yet she finds a joy and purpose in her daily tasks. As mice eat through wires, plastic containers, wooden floors, ruining appliances and food stuffs, the narrator is sent to the town second-hand store for glass food containers that the mice can't eat through:
I spend the afternoon in pleasant, mindless, rhythmic industry; scouring off labels, washing jars and lids, washing down all the shelves, scrubbing away dust and other ominous stains and blobs in the pantry. Sterilising the jars on oven trays. Cooling them, filling them from the packets and bags of flour, lentils, couscous, spices, seeds and nuts and dried fruit. Writing new labels with felt pen on masking tape. After a few hours I stand back and admire my clean shelves, my shining rows and rows of filled jars.It would be impossible to explain to anyone from my old life why or how this--whatever it is; servitude?--fills me with such peace.
The book is full of these very short descriptions of quotidian tasks, which are, of course, metaphors for the kind of scrubbing, cleaning, and refilling of the narrator's soul. The narrator may not admit to a belief in God, but she does believe in the life of the convent and trusts it in some unspoken way. God seems to be just fine with that.
In a much different book, Lulu Miller, science writer for NPR, explores the life of David Starr Jordan, Stanford University's first president, taxonomist, ichthyologist, possible murder accessory, and eugenicist. "Why Fish Don't Exist" is sparked by Miller's own depression which she traces to her scientist father's cheerful assurances from the time she was a child that life is meaningless. Miller believes that learning about Jordan, whose devotion to taxonomy and ideas about evolution uncovering universal patterns of truth in the cosmos, will be an anodyne to this meaninglessness.
It is a jolt, then, for Miller to discover that Jordan becomes enamored of the notion that evolution could explain both the intellectual and physical improvements of humans over time as well as its darker urges toward immorality. Jordan, using his prestige as president of Stanford, pushes the now-debunked theory of devolution, which undergirds the eugenic notion that winnowing "defectives" from the gene pool would greatly improve mankind.
The epiphany for Jordan is a visit to the Swiss town of Aosta and his disgust for the many "defectives" whom he meets there. He sees the place as "a veritable chamber of horrors" full of citizens with "less intelligence than the goose ... less decency than the pig."
But Aosta is Miller's epiphany, too. As a mental health patient, someone Jordan would have deemed "defective," she has a completely different view of the town:
Aosta was a sort of sanctuary city for people with disabilities, both mental and physical. For centuries the Catholic church had provided shelter, food, and care to people who had been rejected by their families because of their condition. And many of these people had ended up becoming skilled workers, in the fields or in the kitchens; many of them ended up falling in love, getting married, and having children. What emerged was a sort of upside-down town. A town where the abnormal was normal, where people who were disabled by society received the support they needed to flourish.
Miller's view of Aosta, so different from Jordan's, leads her to explore the the eugenics movement and to seek out places and people affected by it. In doing so, she is moved out of the despair meaninglessness and is determined to believe that the lives of "defectives" have meaning and beauty. "Why Fish Don't Exist" is a remarkable little book in which the author finds a cure for what Catholics might call "soul sickness." There are no indications that Miller has found Jesus or even God on this journey, just the desire to embrace and love people in whatever forms they come in. Again, God seems to be just fine with that.
Looks like both these books would be good.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the Lulu Miller book touches on my own idea about evolution, that original sin wasn't a bug, but a feature.
She doesn't put it in those terms, but the irony that Jordan, who was a fine specimen physically and intellectually--but morally deficient by your and my standards, maybe--certainly pervades the second half of the book. There is a very moving chapter in which she visits two women who were residents of a North Carolina hospital that conducted involuntary sterilizations.
DeleteBoth books sound great. The second reminds me of some things I gleaned from listening to author Naomi Klein read her book “Doppelganger”. She has an autistic son. She is Canadian but moved to NJ for a while because they apparently have a lot of programs for autistic children. She noted how many parents saw their children’s condition as something to be overcome and were into anti-vaccine conspiracy theories to explain their child’s autism. She herself rejects this approach. She doesn’t want to make her child more adapted to the world but desires to create an environment that will help her boy flourish. She also goes back into history to the Viennese doctor Asperger. Asperger’s work advanced the awareness and knowledge of autism. His early work was humanitarian. Following the Anschluss, Nazi doctrine took over and the nazi doctrine of the Lebensunwertwoll overshadowed him and his work. He referred children to a nazi clinic in which hundreds were murdered. It’s still unknown whether he knew he was sending them to their deaths. He wrote papers saying that some autistic children were worthy of life (useful to the Reich) because they possessed savant abilities. So, I guess he saved some lives. Naomi Klein’s book is very compassionate, as is she. She is Jewish (duh!), anti-zionist and probably pretty secular.
ReplyDeleteBeen through some of that in our family. The world can be unkind to parents, worse for the kids who are "neurodivergent" or whatever they call it now.
DeleteRegarding audiobooks, I think I want to try taking notes for the non-fiction ones to see if that enhances my retention. Unfortunately, that cancels out the advantage of listening while driving or something else.
DeleteI listen to a lot of stuff on audio when I knit, which seems to improve retention. Some people are very tactile and doing anything with their hands--taking notes, doing needlework, doodling, using a fiddle-with-it--improves focus and retention.
DeleteWe used to read aloud to The Boy every night. If he was putting Legos together and seemed inattentive, I would stop and ask him what just happened in the story. Perfect recall.
If he had to sit in a chair and "pay attention," his mind wandered and recall was reduced.
Band and hands on science projects, video club--all that stuff he did well at. Absorb and regurgitate facts, terrible. Offering mnemonic devices helped somewhat with necessary rote learning.
These insights affected how I taught college students and improved student attention and performance across the board.
The book by Charlotte Wood sounds interesting. I will see if my library has it. One of our son’s Australian business partners grew up on a 400,000 acre sheep and cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere Australia.My son sent photos when they visited there. A five hour plane trip to Adelaide , followed by a seven hour car ride. Maybe the photos he sent and the stories he told us about his friend’s life growing up in the middle of nowhere Australia is why it interests me.
ReplyDeleteJean’s library is ahead of ours - ours won’t have Stone Cold Devotional until February. I will get on the hold lust now though.
ReplyDeleteHope you enjoy the book. We have a wonderful inter-library loan program in Michigan thru the state library. It has been a boon to teensy local libraries like ours that can't afford a gigantic collection. It allows the local board to allocate more $$ where it's most needed, to elder and children's services.
DeleteMy book club is reading one called "The Collected Regrets of Clover". It's fiction. The protagonist is a death doula. Not too far into it yet. She is a little bit ..quirky.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about trying that one. I fear it will be "madcap and cute." I almost didn't pick up Why Fish Don't Exist for that reason, but I'm glad I did. It was deeper than I expected. You'll have to report back.
DeleteI wouldn't call The Collected Regrets of Clover cute. The protagonist is an extreme introvert and you get the idea she's on the spectrum. She's very comfortable with the dying, but not with anyone else.
DeleteThanks for this post. The spirituality of cleaning and disinfecting glass jars reminds me of St. Therese's Little Way, although I understand this character isn't explicitly religious.
ReplyDeleteI guess one interpretation is that the character follows the Way and finds peace in it without understanding or acknowledging that God is leading her. That's not salvation or conversion as the Church would see it, but the character makes "spiritual progress" on that path thru out the novel. It struck me as an accurate description of what happens when people not raised with any beliefs find themselves confronted with a kind of peace that they can't explain, but aren't ready to call God. Yet, any way.
DeleteOr Brother Lawrence - The Practice of the Presence of God
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