2011 in Books: Non-Fiction

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward

I grew up reading The Chronicles of Narnia, and was always enthralled by the beauty and creativity of the series. With those books is the first time I remember consciously recognizing foreshadowing and symbolism on my own. As someone who is studying to teach English, it's with fondness I remember those experiences. When I saw that Ward had published a book about the seven books corresponding to the seven medieval planets, I avoided it for a while because I had some idea that it might taint those early memories of Narnia. I didn't want to see those stories broken down and analyzed to death. But let me say that Planet Narnia actually enhanced those initial memories for me. It was not a deconstruction; Ward's approach was respectful of the stories as whole. In fact, his explication tied things together in such a way that showed the stories to be more "whole" than I originally thought. For example, the first half of Prince Caspian, when the children are in the forests and the trees are awakened, always seemed a strange and inconsistent contrast to the the last half, which is all about duels and battles. An understanding of Ares as both militant and silvan deity unites the two parts of the story. I found myself totally engrossed in discovery while reading Planet Narnia, and even more impressed at the subtlety of Lewis. The exciting discoveries, the sensibility to the stories as they were meant to be read, and convincing explication has left me to view Planet Narnia as an exemplar of literary criticism.

Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection by Pope Benedict XVI

My dad gave this to me as an early Easter gift so that I could read it at the seasonable time of Lent. The individuality and centrality of Jesus Christ comes out so powerfully in Benexict XVI's writings. Certainly, the book gave me a deeper knowledge of how much my life is bound up in Christ's. It consistently presents Him as the One in whose presence every other desire pales to nothingness.

"...a distinguishing feature of the disciple of Jesus is the fact that he
'lives': beyond the mere fact of existing, he has found and embraced the real life that everyone is seeking. On the basis of such texts, the
early Christians called themselves simply 'the living' (hoi zontes).
They had found what all are seeking -- life itself, full and, hence,
indestructible life."

Pope Benedict discusses how Christ created us for this eternal life, made it possible by His death and resurrection, and calls us to life in the Gospels. The pope has impressive scholarly knowledge, but just as evident is his love for Christ, and how entirely his life is bound up in the Kingdom of God.

Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
How interesting to read about the early family memories of Pope Benedict XVI and his close-call experiences as a youth in Nazi Germany. In one story, he and a group of his comrades were battered by an SS officer trying to make "'voluntary' recruits," but he was sent away (relieved) with "mockery and verbal abuse" because of his stated intention to become a Catholic priest! I also enjoyed seeing the passion he had for his studies in seminary, and how that carried over to his passion for teaching. He wrote with enthusiasm about a great many authors and works, and discussed some of his own first projects. These memoirs confirmed even more for me what a scholarly pope we have.

A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Thomas Buergenthal
This was a riveting story, and it was, of course, interesting to get inside another personal perspective of World War II and the Holocaust. I've heard the distant, unsympathetic facts of the Holocaust many times before, but a first-hand account brings the tragedy to life. In one part, he describes how his family took in two young children who had lost their parents. In the short time they were together, the children became like his siblings, but it only took a quick gesture from an SS officer and they were sent away to the gas chambers, never to be heard of again. Things like that stood out to me from the book -- the suddenness of his separation from his mother -- the way that life could be going one way and then change so dramatically in only a few moments. In the end, though, I was disappointed at Buergenthal's attribution to fate and fate only.

My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir by Clarence Thomas
I don't normally read this many memoirs, but here is another one I read over the summer. I didn't know much about Justice Thomas, but I had respect and interest for "the silent justice." His memories of the strong, consistent, disciplinary parenting of his grandparents, and especially of Catholic school and serving Mass, held my attention. I learned about the inferiority he felt, even after earning a law degree from Yale. The affirmative action dynamics at the time made him feel that his degree was worthless. He wrote that, "as a symbol of my disillusionment, I peeled a fifteen-cent price sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree...Instead of hanging it on the wall of my Supreme Court office, I stored it in the basement of my Virginia home." His description of the "high-tech lynching" was enlightening. However, he certainly did not paint an idealized version of himself; I was surprised at the candid admittance of faults and acknowledgement of mistakes throughout the book. A disappointment I had was that he didn't give a clear indication of the nature of his faith in the end; however, I thought the book well-worth the read.

Lift Up Your Heart: A Guide to Spiritual Peace by Fulton Sheen
Sheen's writing is like his speaking: passionate, clear, and to-the-point, but not just to any point, to the right one. He hits on the true nature, purpose, and fulfillment of man. He is knowledgable about the field of psychology, and this was one of the first works I read that really connected psychology and spirituality. He exposes the lie that selfishness will bring any kind of peace, and shows how peace can only come from selfless love. He also proclaims unashamedly that selfless love can only come from God. My commonplace book has almost two full pages of quotes from this book; it is full of truisms. Something I especially loved was his line-by-line exposition of parts of Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven,which has become a new favorite poem. It's a pleasure to read someone so devoted to Christ who is also so well-read!

Our Lady of Kibeho: Mary Speaks to the World from the Heart of Africa by Immaculée Ilibagiza

Even though I tend to be hesitant about mystics and miracles, it intruiged me that one of the few Vatican approved Marian apparitions took place in a little town in Rwanda. I thought that the prophecies of the genocide were convincing, and I was familiar with Immaculée from EWTN and her book Left to Tell about her experiences of the Rwandan genocide. I expected it to be a good story, but I didn't expect it to delight me like it did. I've had some emotional reservations about Marian devotion, but this story seemed to melt them away. The manner in which she appeared to the children was so simple and motherly. The children felt so surrounded by love that they would laugh and giggle in her presence. She showed intense love for her "children" in the messages she gave, and also wisdom, even though her words were so simple. I enjoyed reading about it from Immaculée's perspective, because she was a child when they apparitions began, and witnessed miracles -- not just physical miracles, but changes in the hearts of her family and village. Reading this book, there's been a change in me as well -- a greater devotion to Christ through Our Lady, and a deepened understanding of the mysteries of the faith through the Rosary and the special Rosary of the Seven Sorrows.

Significant Books, Part X

What if Heaven's not the afterlife, but rather, earth is the pre-life? This was the epiphany I had when reading Miracles by C.S. Lewis four Easters ago. This book made me consider the supernatural world at an entirely higher level. As a child, my idea of Heaven was a limited little dream world. I imagined flying over green hills, children playing, and a smiling Jesus sitting on a lawn chair. It wasn't a bad prospect, but I don't see it as worth dying a martyr's death.

What if Heaven's not the supernatural, but rather, earth is the sub-natural? This is a passage from the book that I will never forget:

Confusion between Spirit and soul (or "ghost") has here done much harm. Ghosts
must be pictured, if we are to picture them at all, as shadowy and tenuous, for
ghosts are half-men, one element abstracted from a creature that ought to have
flesh. But Spirit, if pictured at all, must be pictured in the very opposite
way. Neither God nor even the gods are "shadowy" in traditional imagination...If we must have a mental picture to symbolise Spirit, we should represent it as something heavier than matter.

A crude analogy of miracles in my mind is the idea of a 3-dimensional person strolling into a 2-dimensional world. He seems to break all the rules; he seems crazy and will probably be killed off. But he is the one with most substance; they simply can't comprehend it.

We are "real" because we are derived from the true Reality, the Existence, the I AM. The common cultural images of God simply won't do. If there is a supernatural Being like that, He must be absolutely terrifyingly unfathomable, but how many of us regard Him in that way?

Thinking about this makes me wonder about the growing belief in "spirituality," but not in God. It seems that we think that, if Nature is the only thing that exists, it must have existed forever self-sustainably, and is therefore somehow spiritual or supernatural. However, that leaves us with spiritual characterizations, but no Character, no Person.

I don't know if that will make sense to anyone reading this; I shied away from writing this post for a long while because Miracles has inspired me to ponder infinity more than any other book, and infinity is impossible to explain, only to expound upon...more...and more...and more...however, I think the expoundings of C.S. Lewis are well worth reading and re-reading.

Our Vocation is Today

People seem to focus so much on the future. Our vision is naturally horizontal -- looking at the things in front of us (or behind). Some of us fruitlessly dwell on the past, and others (like myself) have the tendency to dwell in our imaginings of the future. What I wish I could do is shift my eyes to a vertical perspective, one that moves along the x-axis of time, but is always fixed on the y-intercept of the present.

What I mean is, if we could look upward, focused on God and not on our own fates, our fates won't get messed up by our tainted, twisted selves. We don't live for the future; we live for the infinite God. Our lives shouldn't be directed toward our own pursuits; they should always be in pursuit of Him. I've come to realize that it doesn't matter much what happens to me as long as I am in union with God when it happens.

I came across this passage when I was re-reading The Screwtape Letters for my previous post, and I think it explains the "present" concept brilliantly:

The humans live in time, but [God] destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them.

Recently, I've been faced with many "coming of age" decisions, and to be honest, I've struggled a lot with entrusting them to God. But He has given me a great confidence because, even when I feel I don't know what to do with my life, I know that my life should belong to Him no matter what I do. I try to embrace that knowledge because it gives me purpose in the present.

So do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?' or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?' All these things the pagans seek. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek ye first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you besides.

On a bigger scale, for the last 5 years I have wondered and prayed about my "vocation," whether I should serve God within a family, or consecrate my whole self as my patron St. Cecilia did. I have a deep attraction to both lives, and I have come to realize it is because they both have the same call - to live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up as a sacrifice for us. All lives have this same call, and when we answer it, we are fulfilled in the deepest part of our souls.
Our vocation is LOVE, and we are called to it NOW.

Significant Books, Part VII

The rude, uncomfortable human self-portrait presented in The Screwtape Letters puts me to shame every time I read it. But it's the sort of healthy shame that I need provoked with - the fact that the Creator put in us dignity, purpose and love, and our sin and selfishness are perversions of that.

Lewis shows how "devils" love perversion, confusion, and vacant minds. Haziness and tepidity delight them. They love it when we make God little in our minds, defining our spiritual lives by emotions or social perceptions. But despite their diabolical power, they are entirely crippled by virtue, and especially sincere humility - what Lewis called the "real nakedness of the soul in prayer."

...if he ever consciously directs his prayers "Not to what I think thou art, but to what thou knowest thyself to be," our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with full recognition of their subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it -- why, then it is that the incalculable may occur.

We so often forget that we are serving a fathomless, infinite, incomprehensible Being. If only we would worship Him with awe! The more we fear the Lord, the more we're aware of the stupidity of our sins, but the amazing thing is that the more we stand in awe of our Creator, the more we understand who we are, because we're made in His beautiful image.

Remember, always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd amount of value on the distinctness of every one of them. When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.

There are so many things addressed in this little book, but one that strikes me especially hard, especially during the season of Lent, is the importance of submitting the will to God. No matter how much I think or talk about loving Him, it's all for nothing if I don't actually obey Him.

The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which an enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination will harm us if we can keep it out of his will.

The Screwtape Letters makes the list of my significant books because it opened my eyes to the constant raging of spiritual warfare and heightened my perception of God, not as a someone we define, but as someone who defines us.