[The Bookshelf #62] A Sublime Act of Poetic Imagination
Reflections on how we read and annotate books, how architecture reflects faith, and how disillusionment precedes hope
What I’ve Read Recently
This month, prompted by a rich conversation over tacos with my Aunt Ann and Uncle Larry, I dusted off Frederick Buechner’s book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale (HarperOne). It’s a book primarily geared toward preachers, but I find it helpful for Christians in general, called as we are to truth-telling in a million different ways.
“It is possible to think of the Gospel and our preaching of it as, above all and at no matter what risk, a speaking of the truth about the way things are,” Buechner writes early in the book. “And it is possible to think of that truth as tragedy, as comedy, and as fairy tale.”
Looking back at my reading history, I see that I had read Telling the Truth twice before, in 2005 and 2009. It was the same me reading the book both times. But that me had changed in important ways. This merits some consideration, I think, as we think about what it means to be readers and people who are not static but are growing, hopefully becoming better friends and neighbors to those entrusted to our care.
So here’s my thesis: there are lessons to be learned by studying our annotations and highlights, especially in the books we’ve read and reread over time.
My first time through Telling the Truth, as a senior in college, I was in the habit of underlining carefully, in pencil, using the edge of a bookmark to ensure straight lines. Four years later, during grad school, I had taken to marking up books with a pen, completely freehand, sometimes almost recklessly.
Here’s one example of the contrast.
As I reflect on how my underlining habits might have changed subconsciously over time, let me share some (partial) clues in hopes that you might just find some parallels with your own life.
At the time of my first reading of Telling the Truth during college, I was immersed in a Christian community that, for all the ways God used it to bless me and others, had strong tendencies bordering on rigidity. I had embraced that way of being in the world. And I sought to embody it, I suppose, all the way down to those perfectly straight lines in the theological books I was reading.
But—not insignificantly—I was writing in pencil.
By the time I revisited Telling the Truth, using black ink to mark up the book in freehand, a lot had transpired in my life of faith. I hadn’t rejected any fundamental Christian beliefs; on the contrary, I had grown in them. I had read the Bible in its entirety by that time and had sought to orient my life accordingly, just as my church had taught me: to go into the world in the name of Jesus on a quest that had implications for every area of life.
Following Jesus in all that he commands had led me to a hospital room in Kenya, where a woman dying of AIDS sang “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Following Jesus had led me to Cambodia, living with Buddhists, eating snails, having dinnertime conversations using their broken English and my nearly nonexistent Khmer.
Following Jesus had led me to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and to Costa Rica in the aftermath of an earthquake. Following Jesus had led me to take a job helping newly arrived Cuban refugees to furnish their apartments, obtain their Social Security cards, and decipher the difference between junk mail and medical bills.
Simply put, the gospel of Jesus—the tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale of it—had taken root, expanding my horizons, clarifying my theology, and deepening my faith. Somewhere in that process, I had starting writing with a bit more confidence, even permanence, using ink—even while cultivating a greater tolerance for messiness, in life, in church, and in my scribbles on the page.
There is a point in saying all of that, which is this: the context in which we read books plays a significant role in how we internalize them, how they shape us, and how they might even nudge us in new, unexpected directions.
Since reading Telling the Truth twice in my twenties, life has unfolded in ways I could not have anticipated. So it makes sense that in 2022, I’m stopped in my tracks by passages of Buechner’s writing that apparently didn’t make an impression on me in 2005 or 2009.
It’s important to say that I want to keep learning from both of those earlier iterations of me. I want to hold onto the humility of the guy who made annotations in pencil, even if I’m OK leaving his rigidity in the past. I also want to hold on to the boldness of the guy who picked up a pen, even it it means scribbling out my own nonsense now and then.
Stewarding the unfolding Story (and all our lowercase stories) means doing justice to every plot twist along the way. And so we live, the Lord being our helper.
What I’m Reading Now
During our anniversary trip to Mexico City, Katie and I toured the house and studio of the architect Luis Barragán. Later that day, I put together this photo essay in an effort to share something of that moving experience.
In the gift shop, after the tour, I mustered up the willpower to bypass the enticing coffee table books and instead picked up A Conversation with Luis Barragán by Alejandro Ramírez Ugarte. It’s a slim book from a small press called Arquitónica, which focuses on architecture and gastronomy in Mexico.
What’s unique about this book is that it captures Barragán’s ideas in his own words. Barragán was an architect who valued privacy and who always seemed overly modest about the originality and thoughtfulness of his work. So he never wrote and rarely spoke about it.
Here, though, we get an extended interview with the editor, as well as the transcript of two short addresses: one to a group of architects in Coronado, California in 1951 and the other an acceptance speech after winning the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1980, which honored him for devoting himself to architecture “as a sublime act of poetic imagination.”
Barragán was alarmed that architects of his day—and those writing about architecture—had all but removed some of his favorite words and values from their collective lexicon: beauty, inspiration, magic, spellbound, enchantment, serenity, silence, intimacy, and amazement. These concepts, he said, “have nestled in my soul” and “have never ceased to be my guiding lights.”
These “guiding lights” were, of course, closely related to Barragán’s Catholic faith, a theme I noted in the photo essay I mentioned earlier. “It is impossible to understand Art and the glory of its history without avowing religious spirituality and the mythical roots that lead us to the very reason of being of the artistic phenomenon,” says Barragán in his Pritzker speech. “Without the desire for God, our planet would be a sorry wasteland of ugliness.”
Thanks be to God for beauty, wherever it is to be found.
What I Might Read Next
This week I received in the mail a copy of the new book from Peter Greer and Chris Horst, The Gift of Disillusionment: Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades (Bethany House). I’m especially looking forward to the chapter featuring our friend Tita Evertsz and the ministry she leads in Guatemala City.
(Full disclosure: I have worked with Peter and Chris in the past, most recently on their 2018 book Rooting for Rivals.)
As always, thanks for reading.
Tim
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“Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.”
― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth
I’m thankful that you introduced me to Buechner many years ago. It is amazing that each time I come back to his books, they are still so relevant. Good ol Freddy B.