A Memoir . . . of Sorts by Ian Morgan Cron

This was my Christmas vacation read, and I loved it. It helped that I had heard Cron speak at STORY in September. I literally had his voice in my head, so picking up his gentle spirit in the tone of his writing was easy. I had also experienced his gift as a true minister of Jesus. At STORY he closed his session by reciting a prayer over us that nearly took our breath away. I felt like I was reading the story of a friend, even though I had only briefly met him in a church lobby in Chicago in the fall.

Though my life may have few similarities with the one Cron describes, he still held me close to his experience through his beautiful writing. I felt his heart and emotions in so many of the scenes. I’m pretty sure just from reading the engaging narrative of his First Communion I was baptized as a Catholic!

“And then I fell into God.”

After I read these words, I was done. Finished. They so perfectly sum up the way I have experienced God throughout my life. It didn’t matter if the vehicle was old-fashioned or pentecostal or just plain weird. I know this feeling. I recognize this language. I’ve fallen into God myself. Somehow Cron does this again and again in this memoir.

I’ll admit some resistance to being this sucked into the language of a memoir. Cron discloses his approach in the introduction. It’s typical memoir-speak. The author may or may not have exaggerated certain events or descriptions in an attempt to help the reader feel the emotional weight of the actual event. I dont’ have a problem with this. I do it in my own conversations. Many times I’ve caught myself embellishing the story just a bit, just enough to make sure you REALLY understand the significance. I get it.

Still, I did catch myself wondering WHEN he was exaggerating. Did he add the tears on his face during that First Communion? Or maybe the priest’s knowing look? Was it his friend’s embrace when he finally admitted to a drinking problem? Maybe the photos of his father playing golf with Richard Nixon? I thought about this off and on until I realized it didn’t matter to me. I wanted to feel the emotional weight just as he felt it, even if he had to use a bit of artistic license to get me there.

I do hope the conversation with Miss Annie at the barbeque is exactly as written, though, because I want to tattoo those words on my arm (or on everyone else’s foreheads) so I don’t forget:

“Love always stoops.”

Read it. Live it.

Please, Rev. Cron, please tell me that’s really what she said! Because like the rest of the book, that just felt so real and true.

Wait, don’t tell me. I like just believing it.

Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë are two of my favorite authors, so how can I resist quoting you writing advice (living advice, really) from Gaskell’s biography of Brontë? I can’t.

This particular excerpt closes with this explanation: “I put into words what Charlotte Brontë put into actions.”

Here are her words (after she makes the bold and probably not-quite-true point that men who take up writing are easily replaced in their day jobs by another man just as qualified):

But no other can take up the quiet, regular duties of the daughter, the wife, or the mother, as well as she whom God has appointed to fill that particular place: a woman’s principal work in life is hardly left to her own choice; nor can she drop the domestic charges devolving on her as an individual for the exercise of the most splendid talents that were ever bestowed. And yet she must not shrink from the extra responsibility implied by the very fact of her possessing such talents. She must not hide her gift in a napkin; it was meant for the use and service of others. In an humble and faithful spirit must she labour to do what is not impossible, or God would not have set her to do it.

I know it isn’t modern-age politically correct, but most women I know (even the modern ones) can identify with this description and its encouragement. There is a unique pull, especially on mothers and wives, between our irreplaceable role in our homes and families and our belief that we are capable of offering other things to the world as well.

It’s a tension we all feel. Most of us, when we’re honest, never feel like we get it perfectly right, but that’s the nature of tension. That’s how it feels to love the many roles you play in life and still wonder if, since you are trying to play all of them at once, you play any of them well enough to win an Oscar.

I think you do. And you will. You must “labour to do what is not impossible” – emphasis ours!

. . . even though I LOVE IT! I’ve literally been waiting a year for it to return and now I refuse to watch the first episode.

Until I finish something.

I have a list. A checklist that needs to be completed by a certain (soon upcoming) date. I don’t have tons of extra hours in my day. The only reasonable place to cut out the time I need is by carving into my “down time” – my “Downton time,” actually. The time I use to watch TV.

This will not be forever. I am not a gladiator. I WILL reward myself with a Downton binge once my checklist is complete. But until it is, I’m denying myself in an attempt to get something finished.

I’m watching other things: basketball, a sitcom not to be name on the grounds that I might incriminate myself, and the remainder of the football season. I’m not CRAZY; I’m just trying to dangle a particular carrot in front of my procrastinating self in an attempt to keep my proverbial rear in gear.

Think it will work? I hope so!

Ever given up something you wanted in the short-term for the sake of something you wanted in the long-term?

UPDATE 1/20/2012: Checklist complete. Downton Abbey this weekend!

The One Word challenge was created by Alece from the blog Grit and Glory. In place of making a list of resolutions, Alece had the idea to spend the year focused instead on a single inspired word.

I made lists of potential words for my 2012 choice before I finally settled on this one: Dare.

(I was encouraged by Ann Voskamp’s Joy Dare here. I even downloaded her app for my new Android phone so I can keep up with the challenge to be thankful for 1,000 gifts in 2012!)

Dictionary definitions for dare include:

to have the necessary courage or boldness for something; to have the boldness to try; to face courageously

This year I want to be daring. Not in anything particularly scary or risky but just in the simple sense of action.

I am a model perfectionist; I’d rather not try at all than try and fail. This is NOT a winning quality. I want to change this.

I don’t want to keep talking about writing; I want to write something.

I don’t want to keep talking about going to graduate school; I want to apply.

I don’t want to only read over contest guidelines; I want to submit. 

Other words I considered were go or work or do. Dare seemed perfect because to the action it also added the element of bravery.

Blogger Jeff Goins wrote about the difference between dreaming and starting here and that’s been another source of inspiration. With this word as my focus, I’m ready to dare!

If you are interested in joining up with your own One Word 2012, check out the links and join Alece’s community.

I dare you.

You’ve come in sunshiny and cold, as a New Year should. You are clear skies to lift our spirits and give us hope that you will be good, but you are also a deep chill that reminds us you might not.

We know this and yet we welcome you. We welcome you with cheers and streamers and parties. We welcome you as if you were already delivering a summer’s bounty worth of produce and good things. Strawberries and peaches.

We don’t welcome you this way to try to trick you into behaving as we hope you will. We are not ancient peasants trying to appease a god of fertility or wealth. There are no altars.

We welcome you this way for our own sakes. We are not innocent. We’ve seen years come and go. We’ve known you to be both plenty and wanting. We’ve known you one year to be life and another year to be death. Some years, most years, you are both. We know you will bring us pain as well as parties.

But we welcome you anyway. We welcome you the way we smile at a new notebook all white with red and blue lines of days and weeks and months yet to be filled in. Today you are fresh, clean, and unspoiled. You just might be something awesome.

But if you aren’t – if your pages fill up with words and pictures we don’t want – we know another like you will come back around again this time next year. You will be replaced. And hope will be new again.

Today we imagine that you could be anything – great, wonderful, or amazing. And we celebrate that hope generally more than we celebrate you exactly, although you can’t always tell that by our glitter covered hats and metallic noise makers. Thank you for the opportunity just the same. Thank you for holding invisible what you will really be so that we can celebrate what you might be.

When we toast you, New Year, we actually toast a deep and abiding Hope. You are the embodiment of that eternal Hope today.

Cheers!

I’m planning to enjoy the last week of the year without writing any new blog posts. If you are here, though, and looking for something to read on that new iPad of yours (or your same old laptop but with holiday time on your hands), I made a list of the top posts from this year from Rare Rocks along with some of my comments.

1. With Facebook as My Witness from Februrary

I feel like I wrote this a couple of years ago! It’s still advice I give often concerning a problem I actually see getting worse. Most of the time it could be summed up as saying, “Play nice, everyone!” But there are other concerns with Facebook and social networking in general that I know we haven’t even begun to figure out.

2. The Problem with Smart Girls (Part One) from March

This was one of my favorite pieces to write because the topic was so close to my heart (and my reality with three little girls!). I’ve also applied the principles to my own life and hope to continue that into my New Year. It didn’t have as many hits, but I think Part Two was pretty good stuff, too.

3. Beautiful, Fragile Jars from April

This one has become an all-time favorite post because it brought together some ideas I had been thinking about for years. I just needed the right context, I guess, for being able to express it well.

I hope you take a bit of time to review your own year. It helps us be more intentional going into the next when we remind ourselves of what worked and what didn’t in the previous.

All the best to you and yours!

Felicity

A Christmas letter from me to you. In my own hand, as the Apostle Paul would say.