Reading...
A few days ago, I finished listening to a novel by Anne Lamott, titled Joe Jones. Since my current job involves exclusively mundane and repetitive tasks, I have started loading audiobooks onto my ipod to listen to at work. Since I started doing this, I've finished several books including A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, Hemingway's Old Man & the Sea, and The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. My co-workers probably view this as a bit anti-social, but I don't worry about it too much as I already have the cubicle furthest from anyone else. Besides, the audiobooks (and music) make work bearable, educational, and occasionally pleasurable.
Back to Joe Jones. I rather enjoy Lamott's writing, but I had never read any of her fiction until this book. It was a slightly revised version of a novel released some years earlier to criticism bordering on assassination. It was republished in the last five years or so and that republished, slightly revised edition is the one I "read". The "action" of the story centers around a diner somewhere in the bay area. The characters are a delightful mix of ordinary, everyday, muddled humanity. Nearly every character is fleshed out into someone who is fully human and full of flaws. Humanity is like that. We fumble along through the day-to-day, mostly by habit. We follow elliptical patterns and events that haunt us and hold us in their orbit. Occasionally, we break free, perhaps hitching a ride on a passing comet, only to realize that we are in a new orbit, but it is still an ellipse. All that has changed are the foci.
But, the foci aren't all that's changed. The path of our orbit has changed as well. We see more of our world, and we see the old parts of our world from a new point of view. We grow and try to meet the new challenges that face us.
The characters from Joe Jones grow as well. Their individual struggles are painful and plentiful, perhaps even a bit more than many of us can relate to. But they find their way through because they have each other. In the community of that diner, they hold each other accountable for every misstep and congratulate one another for every victory.
As I see it, that diner was a church, or what a church ought to feel like to its members. A church is a community that takes care of its own, but it also has its doors open, like any diner, welcoming in those who wander off the streets.
I will close with a quote from Anne Lamott, "God loves me just the way I am, and God loves me too much to let me stay this way."
Back to Joe Jones. I rather enjoy Lamott's writing, but I had never read any of her fiction until this book. It was a slightly revised version of a novel released some years earlier to criticism bordering on assassination. It was republished in the last five years or so and that republished, slightly revised edition is the one I "read". The "action" of the story centers around a diner somewhere in the bay area. The characters are a delightful mix of ordinary, everyday, muddled humanity. Nearly every character is fleshed out into someone who is fully human and full of flaws. Humanity is like that. We fumble along through the day-to-day, mostly by habit. We follow elliptical patterns and events that haunt us and hold us in their orbit. Occasionally, we break free, perhaps hitching a ride on a passing comet, only to realize that we are in a new orbit, but it is still an ellipse. All that has changed are the foci.
But, the foci aren't all that's changed. The path of our orbit has changed as well. We see more of our world, and we see the old parts of our world from a new point of view. We grow and try to meet the new challenges that face us.
The characters from Joe Jones grow as well. Their individual struggles are painful and plentiful, perhaps even a bit more than many of us can relate to. But they find their way through because they have each other. In the community of that diner, they hold each other accountable for every misstep and congratulate one another for every victory.
As I see it, that diner was a church, or what a church ought to feel like to its members. A church is a community that takes care of its own, but it also has its doors open, like any diner, welcoming in those who wander off the streets.
I will close with a quote from Anne Lamott, "God loves me just the way I am, and God loves me too much to let me stay this way."
posted by noumenon at 7:34 PM
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