Posts Tagged ‘sin boldly’
thanks, ms. falsani (a book review)
I just finished reading Cathleen Falsani’s book Sin Boldly today. As I closed the last page of the book, I couldn’t help smiling and feeling a bit lighter on my feet.
Maybe it was the combo of finishing her book the same day I started re-reading Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved.
Maybe it was the Spring air and the puffs of white clouds in an afternoon sky.
Maybe it was a surge of nice pregnancy hormones.
But whatever it was, I came out of the week-long funk I’d been in as I read the last chapter of Cathleen’s treatise on grace. I even laughed.
It probably had something to do with the way she helped me stretch my grace muscles this past month, to see all the nooks and crannies where grace resides…sometimes really ugly and uncommon pockets of the world where grace abides. But it also had something to do with finding such a common voice, a soul sister of sorts, in the pages of Sin Boldly. I heard echoes of my own feelings, hesitancies and hopes as she recorded her interactions with extraordinary people.
Take this conversation, for example, as a Vermont native questions Cathleen about her religious background.
“Wait, go back to that Southern Baptist part,” Julia said, interrupting, as she does. “Are you born-again?” articulating her question as if she were asking me if I were really a headhunter or a Martian.
“Yes,” I said, “but I’m not an asshole. At least not theologically speaking.”
I could picture myself saying the exact same thing to any number of people who ask me if I’m a Christian. Because, let’s face it, Christians (like every other group) get stereotyped, pigeon-holed and otherwise ridiculed due to the asshole-ness of a few poor representatives of the faith (though we are – all of us – poor representatives of Jesus more often than not).
But I digress. That was just one small example of why I loved this book. The candidness, the messiness, the laugh-out-loud-ness, the unorthodox search for love and grace, mercy and peace. It is a book I highly recommend to anyone who wants to be moved a step or two closer to an understanding of unearned favor, unmerited joy, undeserved love. Because, as Frederick Buechner says, “in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
Amen, brother Buechner. And thanks, Ms. Falsani. You have helped me break off another link in the chain of lies that bind me to ungrace. Grace has indeed taken me “by the hand and romanced me.”
No Commentsthe word
I’m not pious, I’ve got a foul mouth, I’m ill-tempered,
but in my best moments…I try to make the decisions for love.
Because love wins.
-Cathleen Falsani
As I looked at the six-letter word on its appointed page and thought about the hundreds of hot-off-the-press copies of my first published book gathered around me like a gaggle of unruly children, I sighed.
“Too late now,” I laughed, staring at the unsmudgable ink. Alone and feeling the weight of disapproving voices, I closed my book and left the apartment. I needed a walk.
On my stroll past budding bushes, I thought about the book I’d been working on for nearly two years. Mostly, I thought about the word and the handful of judgments about my choice of verbiage.
“Why did I put it in there?” I agonized and ruminated with each step, frustrated and flustered by the whole matter, angry that it had only taken a little criticism to make me cave. Self-doubt was stealing the happy author joy I had fantasized about since I was a little girl sitting at my Brother electric typewriter. My book was published, released into the world – what could possibly bum me out?
The word, that’s what.
No. Wait. Not the word, but my second guessing the word. Second guessing every word – not just the word. And wondering where I got off trying to be some kind of revolutionary, some kind of radical truth-speaker, an authentic voice in a mass of nicer, conciliatory writers.
I followed this line of thinking in a fearful, nauseating and otherwise self-flagellating way for the rest of my walk. And the better part of a week, for that matter.
But then I came upon a life-altering chapter of Sin Boldly, the 2008 book release from fabulous Chicago Sun Times religion writer Cathleen Falsani. And I remembered something. I remembered my heart. No, better than that…
I remembered my purpose. My passion. And the people I had in mind when I wrote my book. People who have questions, who are searching, who are recovering from addictions, who are getting it wrong and making a hairy mess of life, who are frayed and on the fringes, who are lonely, who are sinners and know it, who are full of glory and beauty and don’t know it.
And, to quote Cathleen:
They are the reason I wrote what I wrote. They are the reason I do what I do…my audience is not the big, bellicose voices of God’s professional bloviators. If they want to read over the shoulders of the marginalized, hurting, scared, ostracized, wounded rest of us, more power to them. But they’re not the point.
Nearly two decades ago, Brennan Manning said the very same thing in his priceless book, Ragamuffin Gospel.
This book is not for the super-spiritual. It is not for the muscular Christians…the academicians…noisy, feel-good folks…hooded mystics…Alleluia Christians…fearless and tearless…red-hot zealots…the complacent…the legalists. If anyone is still reading along, The Ragamuffin Gospel was written for the bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt-out.
As I re-read Cathleen’s own tale of disapproving readers and remembered Brennan’s words, I thought about the people who matter most – the people for whom I wrote As Is. And, among other monumental things, I realized that they couldn’t care less if I use the word.
Still, the fact remains that there are some who may be disturbed by the word as well as some other content that shows up in my book. There are some who think it’s poor taste, who think I won’t sell many books, who think I’ve made myself look bad. And maybe they’re right. I’m willing to plead guilty. I may look back and say the word was unnecessary, poorly placed, downright wrong. Hell, I may take it out in some future edition (but I doubt it).
After several walks, several sessions with Brennan and Cathleen, and several more conversations with God, I was finally able to answer my question. I finally knew why I put the word in my book. I put it there because, for better or worse, the word is a part of my daily lingo. The real me. Not the marketable me. Not the airbrushed glossy me. Not the Sunday-morning-best me. But the Wednesday-afternoon me, the stuck-in-traffic-and-feeling-hormonal me, the fired-up-and-ranting-about-stuff me.
In a book – and a life – with as-is-ness written all over it, that word (and a few others) are bound to show up. And if I can’t be that me along with the best me… If I can’t “speak what I feel, not what I ought to say” to quote Shakespeare’s Lear… If I can’t be honest about who I am as I try to live and love and write and connect with humanity… Then what’s the point of being an artist, being a communicator, being Krista?
But more than this word or that one, I realized what I had been hoping for all along: that love would win. Every time. Because if the sum total of my book isn’t ultimately love, then all the crisp, clean and Christian-y words I could craft are just clanging and jangling and adding to the noise.
And I think we’ve got enough noise.
No Commentsbecause grace
Because grace makes beauty out of everything.
“Grace,” U2
I was driving down Franklin Road today, my mind caught in a garble of thoughts and contemplations. With just a week to go until we release As Is, my first book, my brain is jam-packed with to-dos, should-haves, and general excitement.
On top of that, throw in the hormones and queasy stomach of this 25-week-pregnant woman who had just come from taking the dreaded glucose tolerance test (pregnant ladies, you understand). And for the cherry on top, let’s add three loads of laundry staring me in the face back at home.
You can bet I was not in my finest form as I unknowingly sped down the rolling lanes a few miles from my home. In fact, I was scowling, feeling the wrinkle between my eyebrows grow deeper with each overwhelming thought.
And that’s where I was, racing down Tennessee byways and mental highways, when I saw the man in the orange sweatpants. If you’re regularly in the Franklin area, you may have seen him. In addition to eye-catching clothes, this older man – probably 60-something – dons a set of old school Walkman headphones and literally dances down the side of the road as he walks.
I slowed down to get a closer look. Then I laughed. Not at him. But at the beauty. At his fluidity and freedom. At the absolute dignity of this spunky little man.
With the memory of his movements still lingering in my mind, I laughed again and suddenly realized I had just encountered grace. This unexpected, unformulated, unplanned moment had found me, me in all my undeserved-ness.
I‘ve just started reading Cathleen Falsani’s brilliant book, Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace. In the first few pages she says, “Life is beautiful. And I’m an idiot who doesn’t deserve any of it. But that’s the thing about grace.”
Those words hit me hard as I slowed to a stoplight half a mile from the dancing man. And it got me thinking about the other graces and beauties I miss. So I started remembering.
Grace has tenderly touched my belly countless times as baby Jude performs his own fetal dance inside my womb.
Grace knelt beside me as I took the Eucharist yesterday, remembering forgiveness and life.
Grace listened in on a good phone call with a friend a couple days ago.
Grace smiled as my midwife hugged me and told me to call anytime with any questions at all, even if I had just called the day before.
Grace whispered truth to me again and again in a week filled with false accusations.
Grace put her arms around my husband and me as we talked late last evening.
Grace even shushed my racing mind and brushed her fingers through my hair while I slept through the night for the first time in weeks (a grand feat for any pregnant woman, I might add).
Yep, grace has been there in so many moments. In all my moments to be exact. And I’ve been an idiot, too blind to see her. But she has been there. And that’s the thing. Maybe the most important thing. She is always there. The bonus is when I stop my madness to get a whiff of her perfume as she enters the room. Or when I shut my own voice off long enough to hear her sing and sigh. Or when I finally look up to see her dancing down the side of the road in her bright orange sweatpants and Walkman headphones.
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