THE MOONLIGHT SONATA AT THE MAYO CLINIC by Nora Gallagher

Ten years ago Nora Gallagher wrote Practicing Resurrection, a memoir involving her brother's death, her Episcopal parish's response to their recently uncloseted gay priest, and her own process of deciding whether or not to prepare for priesthood. Publishers Weekly's anonymous reviewer loved it: "With a poet's ear for language and a novelist's eye for essential detail," she wrote, "Gallagher offers a compelling story of her journey toward 'a wholeness bought at the cost of suffering.'"

OK, I confess: I wrote that review. And I also loved Gallagher's earlier memoir, Things Seen and Unseen (1998), about her brother's cancer and her own coming to faith, all taking place within the framework of the church calendar with its major feasts and fasts.

So I was twice happy to learn from Gallagher's website that "Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic is part three of a quartet on modern faith as it is lived out"--once because this new memoir is about her journey into what she calls the Land of the Sick, or Oz (a land I know better than I'd like to), and twice because if this is part of a quartet, there's yet another book coming.

Let me say right up front that you should read Gallagher's other two memoirs first. They reach out to a broader audience. They are more finely crafted. They will allow you to befriend Nora before going with her on this darker journey where both physical and spiritual health are challenged.

The story begins in November 2009 when the vision in Gallagher's right eye goes blurry. She hasn't been feeling well anyway--headaches, queasiness, fatigue--so she schedules an appointment with her doctor. He doesn't like what he sees, and for the next two years Gallagher goes from specialist to specialist trying to find out, and hopefully to fix, whatever is wrong.

There's an element of medical mystery about her story, and I'm not going to spoil it by telling you the eventual diagnosis. Suffice it to say that it will not raise your opinion of American medicine in general: "Doctors were often baffled; the system of specialists who did not follow up on patients made it worse." The Mayo Clinic comes up smelling like roses, however. (Personal note: My experience at Cleveland Clinic, where I had open-heart surgery in 2011, was similar to Gallagher's at Mayo. Both have stellar reputations for the quality of their health care, and both have found ways to keep costs below the national average.)

Gallagher is a spiritual writer, and a person facing a major health crisis tends to have major spiritual concerns. I'm not going to spoil the account of her spiritual journey by telling you how her illness affected her faith, either. I'll only say that she and I--two women of about the same age, both of us having spent years in the Episcopal Church, both of us living with scary health conditions--look for peace in somewhat different places.

You may not identify with this memoir if you are young, or if you have never faced a life-threatening illness, or if you are a conservative evangelical. You'll probably want to read it if you prefer questions to answers, if you've faced serious illness or are caring for people who do, or if you work in health care and wonder how it feels to be the one on the examining table.

I'll finish by quoting a few paragraphs, one of Gallagher's many asides, that I particularly enjoyed:

I once interviewed Jews who had recently emigrated from Russia in one of the openings in the Cold War in the 1980s. Many of them had survived the siege of Leningrad. They were living in a retirement home in Denver. One of them took me aside after I had been there for a few days and said, "Tell me, Nora. Is everyone in America always fine? I ask someone how they were doing and they reply, always, 'Fine.'"
     I explained to her that this was a commonplace; a custom, it meant nothing. Relief showed all over her face.
     "Ah," she said. "That's good. Because I am rarely fine." (Later, whenever they saw me, they would chorus: "How are you? We are fine!" and then laugh uproariously.)
     I missed them, I thought. These were people who understood not fine.

GOD IS NOT ONE by Stephen Prothero and MAN SEEKS GOD by Eric Weiner

Last year when Matt, the adult religious ed director at St. Mike's Catholic Church, asked the Wednesday morning class what they'd like to study next, the response was nearly unanimous - other religions.

St. Mike's is in Wheaton, Illinois, and Wheaton used to be called the evangelical Vatican (it now vies with Colorado Springs for that title). Wheaton is in DuPage County, which is roughly two-thirds Catholic. But the heavily Christian western suburbs of Chicago are changing. Today DuPage County, though still the home of hundreds of Christian churches, also has four Muslim mosques, six Hindu temples, an Arya Samaj center, a Buddhist temple, a Buddhist meditation center, two synagogues, and the headquarters of the Theosophical Society. These people are our neighbors, our coworkers, our children's classmates. No wonder we want to learn more about them.

Thanks to the class, I've gotten acquainted with Stephen Prothero's outstanding survey, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (2010). Prothero's thesis runs counter to the prevailing wisdom, at least in the West. No, he argues, the world's major religions are not all essentially the same. They do not all lead to the same place. They do not "make up one big, happy family." "This is a lovely sentiment," Prothero writes, "but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue." Intended to increase tolerance, such wishful thinking about other religions can actually lead to more terrorism, more war.

Prothero, who describes himself as "religiously confused," does not argue for the superiority of one religion over another. His aim is not to proselytize but to increase clarity and understanding. He does this by looking at how each religion answers the big questions: "Here we are in these human bodies. What now? What next? What are we to become?" "Each religion," he writes, articulates

a problem;

a solution to this problem, which also serves as the religious goal;

a technique (or techniques) for moving from this problem to this solution; and

an exemplar (or exemplars) who chart this path from problem to solution.

Choosing eight religions based on their numeric and historical importance, he then devotes separate chapters to each: Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba religion, Judaism, and Daoism, with "a brief coda" on atheism. The chapters can be read in any order. Last night I delved into Confucianism, about which I know almost nothing. Oops--Prothero says it's been more influential than any other religion except Islam and Christianity. In 30 pages, he summarizes its history, its teachings, and its influence (especially in the West). He also made me laugh out loud more than once. Here is a teacher who can impart an amazing amount of information while holding my attention, not an easy task.

God Is Not One is a great introduction for people interested in other religions' history, teachings, and practices. If that's more than you want to know but you'd still like to find out how various religions might feel to a Western observer, try Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine (2011). It offers significantly less information, being almost entirely experience oriented; but it's fascinating and funny and might even inspire you to go on and read Prothero's book.

Eric Weiner (channeling Prothero?) describes himself as a "Confusionist" and does not accept "the politically correct belief that all religions are equally valid":

I find this extraordinary. Would we say that about anything else? Would we say that all forms of government, be it totalitarian or democracy, were equally true and good? Would we say that all corporations are equally true and good? Would we say that all toaster ovens are equally true and good? Yet when it comes to religion we jettison our powers of discernment. Saying all religions are equally true and good is like saying none are.

He does not argue in favor of the truer and better, however, because--as a health crisis dramatically showed him--he doesn't know who his God is. So he grabs a notebook and his passport and sets off to find God.

Interested mostly in religious experience, he spends time with touchy-feely subgroups of some of the world's major religions (and a few minor ones): Islam (Sufism) in Mendocino, CA, and Istanbul, Turkey; Buddhism in Kathmandu; Christianity (Franciscans) in the Bronx, NY; Raëlism (this would be the world's largest UFO-based religion) in Las Vegas, NV; Taoism in Wuhan, China; Wicca in Seattle, WA; Shamanism in Beltsville, MD; and--I'm guessing this is his personal favorite--Judaism (Kabbalah) in Tzfat, Israel.

The result is a crazy melange of personal memoir, travel writing, religion, and journalism--and it works. Weiner's previous book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World (2008), made the New York Times bestseller list and collected a heap of awards. I wouldn't be surprised if Man Seeks God does the same.

FLUNKING SAINTHOOD by Jana Riess

Flunking Sainthood has to be the most entertaining introduction to spiritual disciplines ever written. For that matter, it may be the only entertaining book ever written in that genre. Never mind—it would take first place even if the field were crowded.

It's been out since November 1st, so I'm coming late to the party. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and then named it one of the ten best religion books of 2011. Emergent pastor and radio host Doug Pagitt interviewed Riess three times. On the Patheos website, Holly Welker wrote that "it's hard to imagine a religious memoir with wider appeal." Welker's review is excellent, if you want to know more about the book. Or hey, just Google "review Flunking Sainthood." Everybody's talking about it.

When her publisher asked her to spend a year reading and writing about spiritual classics, Riess upped the ante: she decided to supplement her reading with practice. She would choose a different spiritual discipline for each month of the year, and she would chronicle the results. Wonder what happened? Note the title.

Instead of commenting on what Riess wrote (click on some links in paragraph 2 above if that's what you want to know), I'd like to suggest different ways this book might be used.

First, of course, you could just sit down and read it. That won't take long unless, like me, you keep it in the bathroom and read it in multiple sittings. And maybe it's good to take it slowly—after all, it's about a whole year of Riess's life. It's so engrossing, though, that if you settle down in a comfortable chair and start reading, you might forget to eat, drink, or pay the bills until you've finished.

Then you might want to do your own experiment. You could pick out a dozen disciplines and investigate them through reading and practice, as Riess did. Or you could choose one or two of the practices that appeal to you and devote six months or a year to making them part of your life.

But the further I got into this book, the more I thought that it really needs to be read with friends. Do you already belong to a book group, a prayer group, a support group, a study group? Your group could read and discuss Flunking Sainthood all at once or—much better—read a chapter each month, try out the spiritual practice described, and meet to share your experiences (this will work especially well if you enjoy laughing). As Riess says in her powerfully personal Epilogue,

One of the main lessons I learned this year ... was that I was ... an idiot for trying so much of this by myself rather than in community. Spiritual practices help the individual, sure, but it takes a shtetl to raise a mensch. There's a particular kind of hubris in the DIY approach I took to all of these spiritual practices, most of which weren't intended to be tried alone.

In fact, Riess makes it easy for you. You don't have to jump in with both feet: January is about choosing practices. February, when the liturgically inclined are probably feeling guilty anyway for not doing more about Lent, Riess looks at fasting. December is about generosity.

But she doesn't make it mindlessly easy. There are no thought questions, prayer starters, or similar irritants.  Flunking Sainthood is a memoir, not a tool. Riess comes across as a friend, not an instructor. And even though she says she flunked every practice she tried, she also learned a lot along the way—though not what she expected to learn—and her readers will learn a lot too.

If your taste in spiritual discipline runs to hair shirts and beds of nails, you probably won't care for this book. As an honest, funny, irreverent introduction to time-honored Christian practices, however, it can't be beat.
____________________________

Full disclosure: Jana Riess is a friend and colleague. I used to be on the editorial board of her publisher, Paraclete Press, and Paraclete sent me a review copy of Flunking Sainthood. Actually, Paraclete sends me review copies of just about everything they publish, and I rarely review any of them (recent exception: Sarah Jobe's delightful Creating with God, which I reviewed last month). Publishers and authors never pay me for writing reviews. I'm poor, but honest.

CREATING WITH GOD by Sarah Jobe

Last week I went to Johnsen & Taylor Inspirational Books and Gifts to listen to five women authors from the Redbud Writers Guild present "Women and Writing: The Importance of Using Your Voice for Christ's Kingdom." After the lively discussion, I wandered through the store looking at book jackets. Most of the books, all aimed at evangelical readers, were written by men. Most of the shoppers in the store were women.

I suppose some men feel less queasy about walking through displays of fluffy angels and inspirational wall plaques if they know that stacks of books by male authors await them in the back of the store, though few men were there that evening. I believe that men - and women, too -  can learn a lot from male authors. On the other hand, I also believe that men - and women, too - can learn a lot from female authors. And I know that there are things that simply can't be said unless a woman says them.

Sarah Jobe is saying some of those woman things.

Creating with God: The Holy Confusing Blessedness of Pregnancy isn't an obvious reading choice for a 63-year-old grandmother, but I picked it up anyway - and was almost immediately laughing out loud. "This book is an attempt to name how pregnant women are co-creators with God at precisely the moment in which we are pooping on the delivery table," Jobe writes in the author's note. "I will claim that pregnant women are the image of Jesus among us not in spite of varicose veins but because of them."

I remember pregnant. First baby nestling so deep within me that there was no room left for stomach, lungs, bladder, or various other organs I had formerly enjoyed using every day. Second baby perched so far beyond me that walking became perilous and friends pointed and laughed when they saw us waddling their way. And my pregnancies were a breeze compared to Jobe's, though her midwives dubbed hers "uncomplicated."

What bothered Jobe - who has an M.Div., is an ordained pastor, and works as a prison chaplain - is that she couldn't figure out "how God could be present in pregnancy in spite of back pain, financial stress, hormonal shifts, and constipation." But as she progressed through two back-to-back pregnancies, she writes, she "learned a startling truth. God is not present in pregnancy in spite of all the crap (and I mean that in the most literal sense). God is present in pregnancy at precisely the places that seem least divine."

If Jobe's wry frankness got me into the book, her theological ruminations kept me intrigued. Who knew that Eve's exclamation at the birth of Cain could just as well be translated a quite different way? That the glow of pregnancy might be related to the glow seen on Moses' or Jesus' face? That groaning in labor is not only inevitable, but also productive and even Godlike? That communion, the placenta, and breast milk have a lot in common?

Such observations are not often made by male writers. And even if they are, how many males could achieve Jobe's "been there, done that" realism? Listen to her reflect on how she was feeling days after her due date, with no sign of imminent labor:

In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells a story about waiting for the kingdom of God. There are ten virgins waiting to greet their bridegroom. They wait and wait, but he doesn't come.... Jesus chooses a negative example; a story about how not to wait. But he could have told a story about how to wait well by simply trading in the virgins for some pregnant women.

Pregnant women surely would have fallen asleep (probably before the virgins) but by the time the bridegroom came, they would have woken up twice to pee and once for a little snack of peanut butter toast and milk. When the bridegroom came striding in at midnight, at least three lamps would already be on. The pregnant woman struggling with insomnia would welcome him to the kitchen table for a midnight cup of herbal tea. The second-time mom would motion the bridegroom to the couch while she finished nursing her firstborn. And the third-time mom would say with a large dose of exasperation, "It's about time you got here - my six-year-old can't sleep for excitement about this wedding feast!" All of them would have their hospital bags packed and waiting by the door. Jesus could have said, "Wait like a pregnant woman."

That night at Johnsen & Taylor's bookstore, I did see books written by women, of course. Most of the novels had female authors. A few books by women were in the Christian Living section. As a retired editor for a variety of religion publishers, I'm happy to see women contributing to any and all categories. But I'm especially happy when women use uniquely female experiences as ways to see God.

The image of God is male and female. Half a God may be better than no God at all - or it may be dangerously distorted. It's way past time to let light shine on the neglected half of God's image. Thanks, Sarah Jobe - and please keep writing.

WHY STAY CATHOLIC? by Michael Leach

"Why in the hell would an intelligent Episcopalian woman choose to become a Catholic?" I had been a Catholic for less than six months when a cradle Catholic of Irish descent - a classmate of mine at a Catholic university - asked me that question. I don't remember how I answered. I'm sure I wasn't very articulate.

Today I still am not sure how to answer her question, or the more compelling question now that I've been a Catholic (more or less) for nearly two decades: Why Stay Catholic? The hierarchy's attitude toward women and children has not improved. Now more than ever, church leadership seems to run the gamut from insensitive to corrupt. So when I saw the title of Mike Leach's new book, which I first read about in an interview by Heidi Schlumpf in Publishers Weekly, I emailed an editor friend at Loyola Press and brazenly asked for a copy.

Disclaimer: I've been involved in in religion publishing for over 30 years. I know and admire Mike, who has worked in religion publishing longer than I have, and in much more exalted positions. I used to work at Loyola Press, and my editor friend there did not charge me for this book. So you are free to discount everything I'm about to say, though I'll also point out that nobody urged me to read the book or even told me it existed, and nobody asked me to write this review (if they had, I would have refused - I'm a contrarian), and - believe me - nobody is paying me for writing it.

So maybe you can trust me when I tell you that this is a good book for lapsed and semi-lapsed Catholics as well as for regular mass-attenders who nevertheless are troubled by aspects of their church ("weary Catholics," Mike calls them). I'd also recommend the book to people who are considering converting to Catholicism. And Protestants could benefit from reading it too: a lot of what Mike says in the first half of the book is true for all Christians.

Mike writes for laypersons, not clergy or academics. His style is light and breezy, but his ideas run deep. He does not have an agenda. He's not trying to defend irrelevant teachings or counterproductive practices. He's not trying to get you to go to mass every week (he admits he doesn't always go himself). He's clearly not trying to put a good spin on the church's serious faults.

But neither does he spend much time complaining. Mike is in love with the church. It's his family. It's where he meets God. It's where he rubs shoulders with people of faith who have changed the world for the better. It's where he sees the realities - the Reality - that lies beneath the surface, what Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called "the dearest freshness deep down things." What Mike wants to do, I think, is to talk about God's presence everywhere in the world, God's unimaginable love and grace for everyone, and some of the people who make that love and grace visible.

In Part 1, "Ideas," Mike leads with what Andrew Greeley has dubbed the "sacramental imagination." In the next 24 short chapters, he looks at a wide range of great Catholic ideas:  God's all-embracing arms, the seamless garment of life, everyday faithfulness, social justice, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and even the Catholic penchant for parties ("Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, / There's always laughter and good red wine./ At least I've always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!" - Hilaire Belloc). Each chapter in this section ends with an "I stay Catholic" sentence or two. For example, a chapter on inclusiveness ends, "I am still Catholic because the story of Bethlehem teaches me we are all welcome. I stay in the church because I know this is true no matter what anybody says."

Underlying just about every chapter is what must be Mike's favorite scriptural passage (and is certainly mine): "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruler, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!" - Romans 8:38-39, NRSV. Mike puts hands and feet on this love in Part 2, "People," and Part 3, "Places," where he offers vignettes of 15 contemporary Catholic Christians and 10 admirable Catholic institutions. In these days when so much of the news about the Catholic church is truly dreadful, it's great to be reminded of so many good Christians, mostly working under the radar. And for readers who want to know more, he ends each chapter in these two sections with one or more URLs.

A two page article that begins "If I were Pope" is worth the price of the book, as is the concluding chapter on how a third Vatican council could unleash a tidal wave of forgiveness. The most moving chapter, however, is the one about Vickie, the love of Mike's life. Over 40 years ago he left the priesthood to marry her. Seven or eight years ago she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In sickness and in health, their love affair continues. Mike loves her, and he is faithful.

That's probably also how Mike relates to his church, and why he is still a Catholic.

EAT PRAY LOVE, the movie

No, the Eat Pray Love DVD isn't out yet, but if attendance this afternoon at Cinemark Seven Bridges is any indication, it won't be in theaters too much longer.

Not that it's an unpleasant movie. I believe the nine of us middle-aged ladies in theater 7 all had a fine time. Some of us even talked back to the screen. Nobody snored, even though there was not a single chase scene.

It's just that there's nothing in the movie to warrant the adulation that has kept the book of almost the same name (commas extra) on the New York Times best-seller list for 184 weeks. Not even Julia Roberts, who at 42 is about 10 years too old to play Liz - though if you need a reason to see the movie, girls, Javier Bardem could provide it. My friend and I had been making mmmm, mmmm noises during the preview of the upcoming George Clooney film, but as soon as we saw Javier, we completely forgot about George.

Still, Bardem, 41, is about 7 years too young to play Felipe, the Brazilian to whom Liz eventually succumbs. This is delightful, actually, since so many movies pair nubile young things with actors past their prime and expect female viewers to suspend disbelief. It is not at all hard to believe that Roberts could fall for Bardem.

But their romance is only part of the movie, and not the longest part. Before we ever meet sexy Felipe, we have to get through Liz's marriage, her subsequent boyfriend, her trip to Italy, her trip to India, and the first part of her trip to Bali. In an NPR review titled "The 'Eat Pray Love' Problem: How Movie Liz Ruined the Story of Book Liz," Linda Holmes writes:

Two hours and 20 minutes is simply far too long for this story. By the time Elizabeth Gilbert — or, rather, the person I will call "Movie Liz," to distinguish her from both Book Liz and actual Elizabeth Gilbert in real life — finishes up in Italy, the thought that there are two entire countries left for her to visit is like realizing at the close of a one-hour doctor's appointment that the doctor has only looked in one ear.

Too many shots of pasta, Holmes suggests. Besides, I would add, the food was poorly chosen. Italy has a marvelously varied cuisine, but from this movie you might think it was one long chain of Pizza Huts.

The whole Italy portion, in fact, is a rapid succession of clichés : primitive living conditions, lecherous young men, Neapolitan clotheslines, rude gestures. The Asian portions are equally stereotypical. In India we see squalid cities and a Bollywood wedding, while in Bali we meet expats and native healers.

Of course Liz, not the countries or the other characters, is the center of attention. Befriending people everywhere she goes - natives and other tourists - she shows that she's not really a narcissist (even though the conversations are all about her). She come uncomfortably close to looking like a colonialist, though, when she gives one grateful woman a house.

In the end, Liz thinks she has learned something, but I had a hard time telling what it was. I will grant, however, that her third man is better looking, sexier, and much, much richer than the first two.

When Eat, Pray, Love was published four years ago, readers either loved it or hated it. The ones who hated it aren't going to go to this movie anyway. Unfortunately, many of the ones who loved it are likely to walk out of the theater saying, "I'm going to have to go back and reread that book. I thought there was a lot more to it than that."

If that's what you plan to do, I'd recommend taking a look at Gilbert's next book too. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage got neither the rave reviews nor the astronomical sales of the first book, but it updates Liz's story and leaves her in a better place. My review of it is here.

OTHERWISE by Jane Kenyon

Fifteen years ago poet Jane Kenyon died of leukemia, just a month before her 48th birthday. A year later, in 1996, Graywolf Press published Otherwise, a collection of poems she was putting together right up until her death. Though most publishers refuse to publish poetry because most books of poetry remain unsold and unread, Otherwise is still going strong.

Here is my review of Otherwise, first published in Books and Culture magazine in 1997 as "An Appetite for the Sun."

--------------------------------

Jane Kenyon lived the unabashedly romantic life of a poet as imagined by a screenwriter: Graduate student marries middle-aged professor, renouncing academia for poetry, learning rural ways at her husband's ancestral farm, escaping occasionally to foreign parts to enjoy fine food and wine and art, becoming--as did her husband--poet laureate of New Hampshire. She falls victim to debilitating depression, he to cancer. They struggle, they write, they love, they rise above their afflictions-until she, only 46 years old, is diagnosed with leukemia and dies 15 months later.

It is not surprising, then, that Otherwise, Kenyon's posthumous collection, has been widely and favorably reviewed; or that on the anniversary of Kenyon's death, tributes to her were held in New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts, while a 1993 televised interview of Kenyon and her husband, Donald Hall, was rebroadcast on PBS stations in Connecticut.(1)

Hall, in fact, spent a busy spring reminiscing about his late wife at various poetry festivals, at a luncheon at the annual convention of the American Booksellers Association, and with NPR's Terry Gross on Fresh Air.(2 )His poem-memoir, The Old Life (Houghton Mifflin, 134 pp.; $19.95), is dedicated to Kenyon; its final poem, "Without," is a masterpiece of raw, unmediated grief.

An enormous spiritual hunger
Despite the flurry of interest in Jane Kenyon, both critical and affectionate, it is rarely mentioned that her poetry is suffused with Christian references. When Terry Gross asked Hall if his wife maintained her faith in God throughout her final illness, he showed Yankee reticence. "Yes," he said, and then again: "Yes."

Faith did not keep her from suffering, he quickly noted: "Often there were long hours of night when there was no grace present, and there was suffering and despair. . . . I don't mean despair of survival, but despair simply of the immediate circumstances of suffering." The couple's shared faith went beyond words: "We both wanted paradise, and to meet again in paradise, so much that we couldn't speak of it."

Kenyon spoke freely of her faith, however, some three years earlier when Bill Moyers interviewed the two poets for the PBS special "A Life Together," which won an Emmy Award in 1994. When Kenyon and Hall moved to Eagle Pond Farm in the midseventies, they "got into the habit of going to church" because that's what the neighbors expected of them. Soon Kenyon discovered an "enormous spiritual hunger" fed but not satisfied by poetry. "Before I knew what had happened to me," she told Moyers, "I'd become a believer"-not in the frightening God of her childhood, but in "a God who, if you ask, forgives you no matter how far down in the well you are. If I didn't believe that I couldn't live."

For Kenyon, that statement was not hyperbole. Her poems reveal a woman dogged by depression:

It wakes when I wake, walks
when I walk, turns back when I
turn back, beating me to the door.

It spoils my food and steals
my sleep, and mocks me, saying,
"Where is your God now?"

Kenyon addresses depression directly in "Having It Out with Melancholy":

You taught me to exist without gratitude.
You ruined my manners toward God:
"We're here simply to wait for death;
the pleasures of earth are overrated."

And yet, unlike many depressed persons, "Jane wanted to live. She was astonished at how much she wanted to live," Hall said to Terry Gross.

"My belief in God, such as it is, especially the idea that a believer is part of the body of Christ, has kept me from harming myself," Kenyon had told Moyers. "When I really didn't want to be conscious, didn't want to be aware, was in so much pain that I didn't want to be awake or aware, I've thought to myself, 'If you injure yourself you're injuring the body of Christ, and Christ has been injured enough.' "

An extreme state of light
Kenyon selected and edited the nearly 200 poems in Otherwise during the last six months of her life. The first 20 poems are new; the last, "The Sick Wife," begun the month before her death, is unfinished. She chose the rest from her four published collections, omitting those she no longer found representative of her work, making minor changes to some of those she included.

The collection reveals a profound religious consciousness. Reviewers often mention her Zenlike imagery: the stark yet fertile descriptions reminiscent of haiku, the self-reproachful resignation ("How much better it is / to carry wood to the fire / than to moan about your life"). Even more pervasive are the Christian symbols: the biblical imagery and quotations, the faith and hope that persist in the presence of suffering.

Many of the poems deal with melancholy, illness, old age, and death. "There was not a great deal of comfort" in her faith, according to Hall; easy answers offered her no solution to pain. "You wouldn't be so depressed / if you really believed in God," says a friend in "Having It Out with Melancholy," and Kenyon offers no response. In Kenyon's universe, God does not remove pain and evil--but neither does he will it. In "Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993" God thinks:

I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!

Kenyon does not stand apart from the evil she observes: "Darkness is all around and inside me." Yet her poems, like her beloved flowers, strain toward the light. On a hot day in April,

I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced
a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong
its appetite for the luxury of the sun!

Light brings health and growth and reveals beauty in dark places. Looking at "Dutch Interiors," she exclaims,

Now tell me that the Holy Ghost
does not reside in the play of light
on cutlery!

Like the Holy Ghost, light also reveals imperfections. The sun comes out after a snowstorm, and "In this extreme state of light / everything seems flawed." Sometimes--frequently--light is denied. Here the poet's faith seems strongest: "If it's darkness / we're having, let it be extravagant," she says. Death is not necessarily an enemy; darkness does not overwhelm light. Writing of a woman in a nursing home, she plays with the word light as she alludes to Jesus' invitation in Matthew 11:28-30: "Master, come with your light / halter. Come and bring her in."

In one of her best-known and best-loved poems, one that Kenyon told Bill Moyers was given to her by the Holy Spirit, she writes:

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

God, she says in "Notes from the Other Side," "as promised, proves / to be mercy clothed in light."

Present at the Creation
Kenyon's poetry at first glance seems artless. Like fine wine, however, her poems linger on the palate, disclosing unsuspected depth and complexity long after the first taste. Look, for example, at the short poem "Cesarean":

The surgeon with his unapologetic
blade parted darkness, revealing
day. Then from her large clay
he drew toward his masked
face my small clay. The clatter,
the white light, the vast freedom
were terrible. Outside in, oh, inside
out, and why did everybody shout?

The surgeon with his unapologetic blade . . . Is this T. S. Eliot's wounded surgeon, plying the steel? The word "unapologetic," from apologia, "to speak in defense," suggests that the blade is not raised in defense against cancerous intrusions, but rather unapologetically is bringing life into existence, like the word of God that is "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword."

. . . parted darkness, revealing day. The creative word, the Logos, spoke all things into being (John 1:3); the word of the Lord made the heavens and gathered the waters of the sea (Ps. 33:6-7); the word of God "separated the light from the darkness" on the first day of creation (Gen. 1:3-4).3

Then from her large clay he drew toward his masked face my small clay. As from "the dust of the ground" (Gen. 2:7), the surgeon takes the child. In a biblical birth poem Job cries out, "Remember that you fashioned me like clay" (Job 10:9). Like Job, who cannot escape personal involvement with his maker, this small clay is inexorably drawn toward the surgeon. Yet unlike Job, who sees his creator face to face (Job 42:5), the small clay sees only the mask, like the veil over Moses' face shielding Israel from God's dazzling glory (Ex. 34:30-35).

The clatter, the white light, the vast freedom . . . And indeed there is glory in this place as the newborn is delivered "from the power of darkness" (Col. 1:13) "into his marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2:9), into "the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21).

. . . were terrible--as "the day of the Lord" is "terrible indeed--who can endure it?" (Joel 2:11). With God-given freedom the newborn will leave the womb's paradise, learn good from evil, earn bread through sweat, birth children in pain. In God-beamed light, her works will be displayed for judgment. "And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world. . . . For all who do evil hate the light," said Jesus, "but those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God" (John 3:20-21).

Outside in, oh, inside out, . . . Breathing, no longer floating; crying out at the noise and light, she is now "a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Cor. 5:17). Or perhaps it is the universe that is new--"a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more" (Rev. 21:1).

. . . and why did everybody shout? Because that's the appropriate response to creation, "when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy" (Job 38:7). It is also the definitive announcement of the new creation--"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout" (1 Thess. 4:16, KJV).

Is this poem about a Caesarean birth? A soul's new birth? The creation of the universe? The Last Judgment? The New Earth? Yes to all.

The poet as priest
Jane Kenyon's poems are short, concrete, and simple. They offer the reader revelations of everyday beauty. They reveal sorrow without despair and hope without false cheer. Reading them is emotionally satisfying, and Kenyon is a sympathetic romantic heroine. For all of these reasons, Otherwise is a good book to own and to give.

On a deeper level, Kenyon's poems have a quality that sets them apart from most contemporary poetry: They abound in the rigorous, clear-headed faith of the Christian tradition. Even before she became a Christian believer, Kenyon told Bill Moyers, she began to see "the spiritual dimension that poetry could have, an almost priestly function for the poet."

In Otherwise, Jane Kenyon has fulfilled her vocation.

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1. Quotations from Jane Kenyon speaking with Bill Moyers are from the 1993 PBS special "A Life Together: Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon," presented in Bill Moyers, The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets (Doubleday, 1995), 219-38.

2. Quotations from Donald Hall speaking with Terry Gross are from a tape of Fresh Air (WHYY, Philadelphia) broadcast on NPR member stations in April 1996.