A Novel by a Spiritual Non-Fiction Writer Set in Central America? Twenty Years Ago? Really?? -- A Guest Post by Writer Paula Huston

Paula Huston is the author of the newly released novel A Land Without Sin.  She is also the author of Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit, The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life (both of which I highly recommend), and many other books.  I invited her to write about A Land Without Sin.

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I’ll admit, it does sound a little far-fetched.  But there is a back-story here.  In fact, I was a fiction writer long before I began writing books like THE HOLY WAY.  I wanted to be a novelist from the time I was about seven years old, and actually began practicing way back then by writing a 36-page thriller about King the Dog, a super-canine hero who looked and acted an awful lot like Rin Tin Tin.  I took creative writing in high school, but got really serious about short story writing in my early twenties.  Since I had opted to get married and take on a full-time job in my late teens rather than go to college, I had no formal training, but I soon figured out that the library was full of great teachers.  I checked out all the BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORY anthologies I could get my hands on and studied the techniques of my favorite writers.

I sold my first story to a literary journal when I was about thirty, and by the time I actually went to college four or five years later (I’d been through a divorce by then, along with an eye-opening stint as a single mom, so I was more than convinced it was time to get a degree), I’d published quite a few of them.  A few years later, now remarried, a new step-mom, and armed with a Master’s in Literature degree, I got a job teaching at the local university and began trying to put together my first short story collection.  But one of the pieces, which was about the classical piano world at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, began to grow  uncontrollably, and pretty soon I realized I had an infant novel on my hands.  DAUGHTERS OF SONG  was published by Random House in 1995.

A year before it came out, however, my husband Mike and I made a backpacking trip to the jungles of Central America to see the Maya ruins.  We had just left southern Mexico for Guatemala when the Zapatista Uprising in Mexico began.  Like a lot of Americans, I knew very little about this part of the world, but this close brush with a revolution triggered an intense curiosity.  And that got coupled with my already-intense interest in the Mayas (my first major, before I switched to literature, had been anthropology).  I asked Random House if I could substitute a novel about all of this for the short story collection they’d planned to publish next.  They gave me the go-ahead and I spent the next three years researching and writing the book.  One of the biggest disappointments of my life came the day they informed me they’d decided not to publish it after all.  I stuck it away in a box and tried to forget about it.

Meanwhile, I met an editor-turned-agent at a writers’ conference who listened to my sad story and suggested I try writing spiritual nonfiction.  I resisted at first, but he was a great mentor, pointing me to wonderful spiritual writers I’d never read and eventually becoming my new agent.  It was his suggestion that I write a book about the simple life, the book that became THE HOLY WAY.   Much to my surprise, I found that I really liked writing nonfiction--it seemed refreshingly straightforward compared to fiction writing, which must always tell the truth but tell it “slant,” as Emily Dickinson puts it.  By the time I published my sixth book in this genre, I’d pretty well abandoned any notion of returning to fiction writing.

But one day a year or so ago I got an email from an old friend, a Christian editor who was starting a new literary imprint called, ironically enough, SLANT.  He asked if I had “any old novels lying around.”  I did!  And eighteen long years after I’d stuck it away and nearly forgotten about it, I dragged out that dusty old draft and reread it--and fell in love with it all over again.  Greg Wolfe, the Christian editor in question, liked it too.  He asked me some great editorial questions that helped me launch into a major revision, and a year or so after that initial email, A LAND WITHOUT SIN finally saw print.

How does it feel to hold this long-delayed book in my hands?  Surprisingly enough, I’m very grateful Random House did not publish it back then.  I learned so much during those many years of writing spiritual nonfiction.  First, I did not have any formal training in theology or divinity, so I had to educate myself in those areas--which made it possible, for example, for me to write much more believably about the struggles of a young priest to come to terms with the question of evil.  Second, when I wrote that first draft back in the early 90‘s, I was a very recent returnee to Christianity, still wet behind the ears, and this naive inexperience showed up as a certain kind of preachiness in that earlier version.  And finally, like a lot of people in their sixties, I’ve said goodbye to some of my youthful idealism by now--and I think this makes me a stronger, more realistic, and more truthful writer than I used to be.  Certainly a better writer for a book like this one, packed as it is with The Big Questions and their Not-So-Easy Answers.   

Fifty Acres and Fool: More Weeds -- and God

I took a break from farming this weekend -- a combination birthday gift to myself and Mothers Day present for Nancy. We went to southern Indiana to visit some family there. The men-f0lk went golfing (I shot a 97, not bad for my first time this year), the women went shopping, we all went out to eat, and then to a movie. It was a nice relaxing time.

It rained a good bit while we were there. In fact it rained a whole freakin' bunch. Which would have made me feel not so bad for not being homing snuffing out weeds except I checked the weather report which reported that our place, just two "r's" (as they say in southern Indiana) to the north was basking under sunny skies and mild temperatures.

Perfect weed growing weather.

So I fretted a bit -- thinking I should be Round-up-ping the dastardly poke berry and its noxious relatives whose sole evil purpose (other than to survive) was to make my prairie life miserable. I should be home, I thought, removing every stain of weedy sin from the land so that a wonderful crop of WSG and forbs might emerge to the glory of ... well, um, Brent.

During one of my weedy musings, the thought occurred to me that I may care a whole lot more about weeds -- both real and metaphoric -- than God does.

Part of that comes from remembering an old joke about story about a man who bought a farm that was overgrown with bushes and weeds. The place was a mess. But slowly the man began to clear the weeds and bush and turned the farm into a show place -- weed free and verdant. One day the man's minister came to visit, and when he saw the beautiful flowers and plants, he observed, "Well, friend, you and God have done a marvelous job on this garden."

To which the homeowner replied, "You should have seen it when God had it by himself."

I feel that way sometimes. Yep, when God had Ploughshares by himself, he pretty much let it go to seed -- bush honeysuckle seed, poke berry seed, etc. It's taking a lot of work to clear the invasives out and let the good stuff grow. Blood, sweat, and tears -- literally.

And, truth be told, should I stop doing this, then in a few years, the place would be busy and weedy again. And God would not seem to care. Birds would still nest, coyotes would make their dens, deer would tramp down the tall grass for their beds, bees would zoom around the poke berry and bush honeysuckle and iron weed and milkweed and... life would go on. And it would be -- if not aesthetically pleasing as I want -- still good.

And I wondered -- do I worry too much about weeding in my life? Weeding the teeny-tiny sins out? OCD for righteousness?

Some of that nature in me, comes, I know, from growing up in a place where altar calls were not uncommon and guilt was the faith flavor of the day. We were sinners facing the wrath of an -- if not angry -- pretty peeved God. And at 9 and 10 I knew I was sinner and sins that needed to be rooted out like weeds -- even if I couldn't quite figure out what they were. I mean, I was serial smart-ass, not a serial killer.

But it's a tendency that's hard to shake after all these years -- the need for perfection, to root out evil. Even though, when I get to the end of my field and look back and see sin seedlings popping up!

How can that be?

I'm starting to decide that it can be because that's how human life it. We sow good and sometimes weed seeds blow in -- just like on the farm.

And God does not seem to be overly upset with it. From my reading of scripture, that's what grace is all about. It's not by our works (weeding) but by our faith (trusting in God) that we are saved. And by saved I mean become a beautiful garden for God.

So, in an attempt to be less O-Weed-D, I'm not going to spray tonight. I'll let the seeds and tares spring up together.

Tomorrow, though, them weeds better watch out!

-- Brent

Atonement

I've been thinking a lot about atonement lately. That probably has something to do with a book and a movie I've experienced this week. The book is Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brook. It's a novel about the plague coming to an English village in the 1660s. Not to give too much away (in case you want to enjoy it yourself), but the idea of atonement runs throughout the book and is especially strongest in one scene toward the end when one of the main characters goes on a rant about how a person can ask for and receive forgiveness, but still needs to atone for sin.

The movie was "Atonement," based on Ian McEwan's excellent novel. It's a really fine flick, filled with nuance. It's not as good as the McEwan's novel, but then that would be an impossible task, I think. Once again, as the title none to subtly suggests, atonement is the theme. The ending is wonderful though -- and completely unexpected.

So, atonement. Which one dictionary defines as "reparation for an offense or injury." As I watched the film and read the book, I kept coming up with the question, can we offer reparation for an offense or injury? I mean really? Can we ever make it right? Certainly courts try to set ideas of what reparations ought to be in civil suits and the Bible (and other scriptures) set other standards ("an eye for an eye," etc.). Still none of them really seem to work -- they never bring about what we really want most -- restoration of that which was lost, be it a relationship, a loved one, or an eye.

When I was a younger know-it-all (as opposed to being an older know-a-little-bit), atonement seemed like a pretty good idea. A person ought to make up for his or her offenses or injuries or sins. That was only right. Except I think it was only wrong. It led me to rely too much on my efforts and not enough reliance on God's grace. The fact is that I have too many offenses, injuries, and sins to atone for. And, as I age and reflect on my life, I come up with even more -- things from my past that haunt me like Hamlet's ghost.

It seems to me then that, should I ever be in the place of having been offended, injured, or sinned against, that I need to be graceful. I need to extend my grace, my forgiveness if you will, to those who have sinned against me. I need to let go of the idea of needing them to atone. And hopefully, as I live in a spirit of a contrite heart and soul and ask forgiveness, much needed, undeserved grace will be extended to me.

--Brent

Smoking and the Cross...

Life is strange -- and sometimes it's stranger than at others. Like this afternoon. Nancy and I drove into town to attend some friends' 60th anniversary celebration. Of course, not a card was to be found around the farm, so we had to stop and buy one. Rather, I had to stop and Nancy had to buy the card -- she doesn't trust me to always get something appropriate!

So while she went in to get the card, I sat in the car and read the mail that we'd just picked up. The usual -- credit card offers, mortgage offers, pleas for money. A beat up old Chevy pulled in next to me. The driver was smoking a bedraggled cigarette clasped in his teeth by a cigarette holder. Franklin Roosevelt-elegant he was not. After a few seconds, he yanked the smoking butt from the holder, rolled down his window, and flicked it toward our car. It rolled into a puddle and sizzled out. Then he climbed out of his car and made his way toward the drugstore.

I was peeved. I mean, I don't care if the guy smokes. That's his business. But if doesn't want to stink up his car with a smoldering butt, why's he think I'd want it in the parking lot next to mine? Littering. What a clueless bozo! Shaking my head, I watched him amble across the parking lot headed for the door. As he approached the front of the store, he paused at the back of a vacant van parked there. It's been a rainy, gloomy day here, and the back-end of the van was covered in road dirt. The man paused and drew a cross in the dirt. He admired his handiwork and headed into the store.

I was more than bemused. This doofus litters and then makes the sign of the cross on other peoples' dirty vehicles. What in Heaven's name? And then I thought -- indeed, what in Heaven's name ... does Brent do that's just as goofy and never sees himself? Too much, I'm afraid. I try not to litter and I don't make the sign of the cross or fish or anything else on other people's cars, but I'm sure my sins could find me out just easily in the eyes of people watching me.

So thanks for the lesson, Mr. Cigarette Smoking, Litterbugging, Cross-drawing Guy.

--Brent

PS If you haven't been to that amazing website http://www.brentbill.com/ in a while, you might check it out -- especially the "Other Good Books" and the "Brent's Books and More Store" pages. Both have been updated and all the books, CDs, and DVDs in the store have been hand-picked by your's truly -- no automated stuff from Amazon!