A Father Figure: Michael Lewis' 'Home Game'

In a year, I may not remember much from Home Game . That's not to say Michael Lewis' writing is bad; it isn't. He writes here in just the style I like -- a kind of themed memoir that weaves together anecdotes and life lessons. The theme is, per the subtitle, An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott is a parallel that quickly comes to mind, and Paris to the Moon too (Adam Gopnik), which contributes to a laugh line in Home Game.

I laughed more than once. Home Game was easily entertaining. I suppose Lewis would have been in trouble if I -- an educated new father with a dry sense of humor and sympathies for themed memoirs -- didn't laugh. I was I believe, part of the book's target audience. He hit his target.

Here's my one knock. Lewis playfully describes how fatherhood is, at least in his experience, for the bourgeois America. He hardly touches on how fatherhood should be. This isn't strictly a criticism as Lewis doesn't claim to cover this ground (can you deride baseball for not having enough tackling?). But fatherhood itself -- the ideal, the archetype, the form -- is what I find moving, compelling. Wisdom along those lines is what would have made the book, more than entertaining, memorable.

Where was God in 1776?

1776 by David McCullough reads like a novel, but is in fact a historical account of that year in the Revolutionary War. Of course, I’m years late in saying so. The book was published in 2005 and McCullough is already well established as an excellent writer and historian (and from what I hear third-hand a very decent man in person).

The book is written in the classic historical style, with military battles as the main drama and generals as the chief characters. This might be a knock against it in a college history department, but I was snowed. I am convinced that George Washington and Nathanael Greene are men of great courage and integrity, and yet still human. Plus, some of my ignorance about the basic events of the war – the siege of Boston, crossing of the Delaware – was remedied. (Germans fought on both sides!)

My one reflection comes from having just read City of God. 1776 narrates an undeniably pivotal moment for the city of earth. 1776, the year, is when the mantle of world’s-most-powerful-empire began to pass from Great Britain to the then-emerging thirteen united colonies in America. My question is, what was going on in the city of God?

The primary answer 1776 gives is that white Christians were killing each other on the continent where they had recently killed off most of the Indians on the east coast. Exceptionally in 1776 , there was the pastor in New York who condemned the torture of a soldier, but most all other references to God and Christians are in the sense of imploring the creator of the principle of liberty to give victory to the colonists (or in the case of the British, that the God who created order would give victory to the king’s army).

So, I guess I’m now making a personal statement: I’m interested in church history. I also hope there's also a universal statement here, something like God is the ultimate arbiter of history.

Facing the Waves: A Portrait from Fatherhood

Recently, my family joined my brother-in-law's family at the beach for a long weekend. I wasn't sure how my older son, almost two, would enjoy it -- the sun, sand, waves and two older cousins. Last year on a similar vacation, Levi was too young to play with his cousins and he recoiled from the surf.

This time, he and I headed out alone for our first walk down to the beach. Upon arriving, Levi did what he often does in new places: He picked a direction and just kept walking. He may have walked 300 yards (a long way for a two-year-old), when I turned him back around. On the way back, I coaxed him to the edge of the waves. At first he was apprehensive but over the following minutes he experimented with the waves -- running from them, planting his feet in them, taking a few more steps towards them.

Soon, he was in the ocean up to his knees and the stronger waves would knock him down. I watched to see if being thrown to the wet sand would end our frolic. It did not. He turned the maneuver into a game. When a bigger wave came, he let it push him down so he could ride it out on his bottom.

The position he eventually took was lying on his stomach facing the sea near where the waves crested on the beach. The effect was the most junior form of body-surfing; the stronger waves reached just high enough to envelop his body. I saw an opportunity for father-son solidarity and lay down next to him. As each wave came in, I turned my head to check if the saltwater had overwhelmed him.

"More," Levi said between waves ("more," being one of his thirty words).

This is the image I'm left with from that weekend: My older son sprawled in the sand, saying, "More," as ocean waves lap at him. I pray this is his posture in life. I pray he doesn't fear life's waves, but makes a game with them -- points his head towards them and says, "more."

Felonious Jazz, A Novel

A colleague’s husband had the gumption to come into the office and hawk his self-published novel. I respect that and so read the book. It’s called Felonious Jazz.

My gut reaction is that it reminds me of The Da Vinci Code in pace and tone. It sticks to the murder mystery genre with the plot being driven by the dark mind of the villain. The mood is conspiratorial. A dashing detective is in pursuit. Can he match the mind of the criminal before another innocent woman is savaged?

A superficial comparison of Felonious Jazz and Da Vinci Code would put the two worlds apart – the suburban culture of north Raleigh, N.C. and the ecclesial intrigues of Europe. But, besides the tone, the quick, page-turning scenes seem similar to me. I am reminded of the advice of radio producer Ira Glass to close out a scene every 30-45 seconds with a flourish that will carry a listener forward. Bryan does that, well, in Felonious Jazz. With my brother-in-law visiting, I snuck off to find out if Jeff Swain would catch up to Leonard Noblac before baby Jacob was harmed….

Finding a Friend in the City of God

So I’ve finished City of God. I went in with an eye towards the parallels between the Roman empire of the fifth century and the American empire of the twenty-first – and especially the location of the church then and now. But, I’m coming away with something more intimate: a portrait of a Christian man concerned with the place and character of Jesus’ bride.

Augustine, I can imagine, in America, born in small town Iowa circa 1950. He moves to Chicago in the 70s, encounters Eastern religion and begins his intellectual ascent at the University of Chicago. Soon, he is rhetorical superstar, moves to Washington, D.C. and is immersed in the think-tank world of ideas and influence (his girlfriend and their child are conveniently left behind in Chicago). It is in the swirl of D.C. power that he has his conversion. As his faith unfolds, he retreats from Washington and secular power, returning to Chicago and accruing ecclesial authority. It is in his waning years, as the American empire begins crack under attack by raiding terrorists, that he writes his opus differentiating the church from America, apologizing against Enlightenment Deism, popular consumerism, and the Eastern religions he once embraced.

OK, I admit to already having this sketch of present-day Augustine in my head before reading City of God (having read Confessions a couple of years ago). But, City of God did nothing to disabuse me of it.

Augustine’s mind, as I come to it in City of God, is accessible. He is a pastor who cares to give his people political cover by answering the charge that the Christian faith was responsible for the sack of Rome. He is an intellectual evaluating the marketplace of ideas from Christian ground. He is a scholar determined to understand the truth in scripture through various translations and conflicting hermeneutical traditions. He is a contemplative who hears the words of the psalms echo in the quiet of his soul. He is crazy in the Christian way of believing that angels and demons are at war around us during this time before Jesus’ judgment.

I like this man. My sense at the end of City of God is of personal affection. I acknowledge there’s much to learn and say about Augustine’s wisdom (best done in a forum more demanding of rigor than this), but reflections now are of veneration.

Augustine the Liberal, Evangelical Contemplative

It’s an obvious game to play: If Augustine were around today – Twenty First Century America – in whose church camp would he be? Of course the answer is that he doesn’t fit easily into anybody’s, but the question provides an accessible frame for reflecting on his treatment of scripture.

He is one part liberal in his highly allegorical reading of Genesis. For example, he says the six days of creation should not be understood as 24 hour periods of time:

Of course, what we mean by the ‘days’ we know in experience are those that have a morning because the sun rises and an evening because the sun sets. But the first three ‘days’ of creation passed without the benefit of sun, since, according to Scripture, the sun was made on the fourth day. Of course, there is mention in the beginning that ‘light’ was made by the Word of God, and that God separated it from darkness, calling the light day and the darkness night. But no experience of our senses can tell us just what kind of ‘light’ it was and by what kind of alternating movement it caused ‘morning’ and ‘evening.’ Not even our intellects can comprehend what is meant, yet we can have no hesitation in believing the fact.

With this basis for an allegorical reading, Augustine is off and running to find figures for the cities of man and God throughout Genesis. Interestingly, he is sometimes quite concerned with textual criticism. In playing out the allegory of the two cities in the descendants from Adam to Noah, Augustine has a lot riding on the actual ages of the named men and women. Are these people truly of another age, living many hundreds of years? Or, should these years be understood by a measure other than the 365-day solar year? Augustine takes up point and counter, discrepancies in various translations, and the possible motivations of redactors. It all sounds very nineteenth-century-Germany (only the conclusion is different!).

Augustine is also an evangelical. When apologizing to pagans and philosophers, he leans heavily on Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially Paul’s contention that the splendor of creation is its own sufficient argument – to all – for the existence of one truth God. He has no problem calling competing gods “unclean spirits”. There’s no political correct impulse to call non-Christian religions and philosophies different-but-equal.

He is, though, at heart – according to my contention –, a contemplative so steeped in prayer that he slips into speaking with fragments of Psalms. It seems that as he writes he has ideas that are either inspired by pieces of psalms or confirmed by them. And so snippets of psalms appear in a pious mode – because they resonate with truth and elegance – without regard to literary criticism or even apologetic logic.