Exiles

Sometimes the books I read can take me into places that I am not able to physically go to in real life.  In the case of the book Exiles it reminds me of a stage of my life that I am not about to emotionally return to that I still had a reverence for.  

Exiles is about Girard Manly Hopkins and his writing of “Wreck of the Deutschland.” I really loved how this book latched onto the anatomy of a poem and rotated between Hopkins life as a poet and the life of the nuns sinking with the Deutschland. I felt like the book highlighted a lot of the things I find beautiful about religion---the poetry of ritual and prayer, the life of service, the sense of prayers being a legitimate cry to help from God.

It was an emotional experience deliberating my personal significance of this book. I’ve come out of as being against institutional religion these past few years. But at times it has not been without a deep inner conflict that I have. Mine is a story of being told that I found faith in the wrong places and feeling excluded.  This eventually evolved into making other aspects of my life a larger priority—like studying literature in the hours that I used to study the Bible and going to the gym on a Sunday morning instead of going to church.  With the distance of time I started to embrace logic and objective perspectives on the world more fully.  I know that I touched on expanding my critical reasoning skills in my post on No Sacred Cows. However that does not mean that I do not honor the point in my life in which prayer and liturgy played an important role to me!  

But there was something about this book that was beckoning to me to find it again. I remembered reading this book but I could not remember the title of the book. My husband was watching the football game when I told him that I was having troubles finding a book about a ship wreck with a blue cover. If that is all you ever remember about a book that is a very generic thing to remember. I got numerous Goodreads, Google and Amazon results—none of them pointing me in the right direction.

I finally decided to take this dilemma to Facebook recalling details about it that were important to me: “Clergy friends: at this time in 2010 I was taking an Old Testament class with Terence Fretheim at Luther Seminary and took an active interest in Noah's Ark and the theological language utilized around the storms in our world and in our lives. There was a novel that I remember making connections to I had recently read about a ship that was sinking where there was a priest and/or nun was sinking with the ship. I spent a lot of time this afternoon looking for what the book may have been on Goodreads lists and Google Images with no luck. I swear it was a book that another clergy friend recommended to me but I can't remember who recommended it or what the book was but I remember the experience of reading the book. This afternoon I really wanted to find it again. Do any of you know what that book might have been?? I no longer have my seminary papers. This is also part of why I use Goodreads as my tracking tool for everything I read in the secular chapter of my life so I don't have any issues like this ever again. But I really want to find a copy of this book again.”

I was not sure if I would ever hear anything from anyone—but a friend of mine who is an Episcopalian priest responded to me right away with a picture of the book saying that the book I was looking for was called Exiles.  I thanked him and looked for it through my public library system right away. Apparently my library did NOT have a copy of the book. Even though I am dedicated to using the library more these days for books I do not already own (you can read about the journey that lead me there here) it seemed like if it was a book I read once and needed to read again that it was worth purchasing the book. I bought the book right away. My priest friend also sent me a link to a sermon that the book influenced him to write.

Reading his sermon and then later the copy of the book that arrived in the mail reminded me of how beautiful the nature of authentic prayer can really be. I read it meditatively and it invoked a side of me that I had long forgotten about. It reminded me of the more beautiful aspects of Christian rituals and gave me an excuse to read Wreck of the Deutshland which I was pretty obsessed with during a dark yet very defining point in my life. Reading the words again: “Oh Christ, Oh Christ, come quickly”--an authentic cry of prayer—tugged at my heart. I have strong reasons for not wanting to venture into the walls of a church again however it reminded me of the more beautiful aspects of Catholic Christian liturgy.

 Sometimes the books I read can take me into places that I am not able to physically go to in real life.  In the case of this particular book it brought me to a place that I will never be able to return to but it helped me relive the memories of the positive aspects that I still cherish in my heart.  In fact, the only explicitly theological book that I kept was a copy of The Book of Common Prayer.  For some reason a tiny voice in my head told me to not let go of it. I want to have logic rule my life but I still honored that quiet, mysterious voice.