My Thougts on a Memoir

I just finished reading a memoir called The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It was quite a read. The story of her childhood is both heart breaking and inspiring. Jeannette's parents were brilliant, troubled people. The father was fascinated by science and physics, he was an inventor of sorts, but also a drunk who refused to work for "the man."
Her mother was an artist and stay at home mom who made me feel like I should get a mother of the year award if only because I feed my children on a daily basis and attempt to protect them from harm. This mom also hated to work and only did so when her own children dragged her out of bed and forced her out the door. These were proud people who refused help from anyone but relatives, therefore welfare was not an option. The children were regularly left with no food in the home, so they were required to scavenge for lunch in the trash at school - at times this was their only meal.
I was, at turns, inspired by the father and infuriated by him. One Christmas when they had nothing to give their children, the father took each child outside to sit on the hood of his car and pick a star. That was to be their Christmas present, a star in the sky. Jeannette (the author of the book) chose Venus. Her father explained that it wasn't actually a star, but conceded that if she wanted to choose a planet as her own, he didn't see why she couldn't.
As I read that I wished that I were that creative as a parent. Instead of going into debt or panicking about the perfect gift for my kids, why not give them a star in the sky? Granted, you can't take it home and play with it, but every time you look up in the sky, you'd know it was yours. It was a beautiful moment that clearly meant a great deal to the author.
Another Christmas, a few years later the dad came home in a drunken stupor and burned the Christmas tree to the ground. This was only after another humiliating trip to Christmas Eve mass. The dad's favorite activity during the priest's sermon was to shout out arguments against the plausibility of Mary's virgin birth and other miracles. The man certainly kept life exciting.
It amazed me when, toward the end of his life he discovered that there was a God. It was not through some miracle or a person's love or kindness, but through physics. In his readings he found that there is a natural order in the world. That, he decided, pointed to an intelligent design, a creator. This proud man was actually humbled for a moment.
Of course, the miracle of the story is how the kids survived, how they escaped the poverty and dysfunction of their home to create a safe, clean, hard working, well-fed life of their own. It is both encouraging and inspiring. And an amazing testimony to the potential of every human life.

Peace and Insanity

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane."
- Philip K. Dick

I saw this quote the other day and it made me chuckle, in an ironic sort of way. How often I drive myself nearly mad trying to make sense of the world around me. I find comfort in the words of a counselor friend of mine. He said that mental health is on a continuum, it's not just you're crazy or you're totally sane, but there are gradations. This helps on my "insane" days. Perhaps I'm not actually certifiable, maybe today I'm just leaning a little more that way.

This guy, Philip Dick, had a different plan. Don't make sense of life, was his philosophy, just go insane. I thought it was sort of tongue in cheek until I decided to look up who he was. He was a writer who lived most his life in poverty, writing, doing drugs, and trying to avoid the reality around him - mostly by doing drugs and allowing himself to go crazy. He wrote the books that eventually became Blade Runner, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly.

Married five times and never able to break out of the not very lucrative realm of science fiction novels, this guy did not experience much peace in his life. I found another quote of his that said, "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards." Again, I chuckled, appreciating this guy's perspective. I guess a lot of writer's do this. If they're not writing to illuminate some wrong in the world, then perhaps they're writing to create a better world that lives up to their standards.

But all this talk of insanity and the sad story of Philip's life reminded me of another quote from one of my favorite books. It is called The Singer, and was written by Calvin Miller. The book is part of a trilogy and is a mythic retelling of the New Testament. The language is lyrical and the imagery is stunning.

The part that I can't stop thinking about is where the Singer (Jesus) has been walking along with the Hater (Satan) when they come to a man that looks more like a beast than a human. He is chained to a wall and when the Hater begins to play his wretched tune, the man-beast goes mad. He breaks his chains and goes running after the Hater (who flees into the woods), but the Singer did not waiver:


The Singer then began to sing and continued on until the Madman stood directly in his path. With love that knew no fear, the Singer caught his torment, wrapped it all in song and gave it back to him as peace.
And soon the two men held each other. In their long embrace of soul, the spirits cried and left. They stood at last alone.


As I think about Philip K. Dick and his inability to accept the reality around him, I wish that while he was living I could have sat with him and told him about the peace that he could have had within him. It is not a promise of an easy life, nor one free from madness, but it is one with the hope of peace that Philip never seemed to find in his drugs or the temporary, imaginary worlds he created. I don't know that I myself have a very strong grasp on this peace that is offered, but I believe it is there. And I love that there is one who can catch my torment, wrap it all in song and give it back to me as peace.