Published 2006
Midlife crises have become a
widespread subject for consideration. In
fact, I often get the impression that it is virtually an honor today for anyone
older than fifty-five to be able to claim to have had one. Having weathered a perfect storm by that
time, especially one involving personal identity, gives you a little heft when
you are in conversation with anybody about major life issues. Some of us seem to enjoy showing off our
battle scars and walking others whose confidence we share through the drama of
our past-life moments of truth.
Autobiographies have been penned recounting enormous life-altering
changes that have had to be made under the gun of traumatic circumstances,
domestic upheavals, cultural shifts, or heightened self-awareness. We have no trouble claiming to be veterans of
private wars or even iconoclasts. I
sense that before my time people had these crises but kept them largely to
themselves or called them by other names.
You stayed married to the same person, attached to the same job, or if
something happened that made it impossible to do either, you absorbed the shock
and justified outcomes as the mysterious will of God. Self knowledge as a result was not always in
great supply.
No novel I have ever read has
taken me more richly and radiantly into that world of yesterday than Elizabeth
Strout’s “Abide with Me.” The victim of
forced change and crisis is a Congregationalist minister, Tyler Caskey,
presiding over a small town church in the state of Maine in the 1950s. He gets married in his twenties to a young
woman barely out of her teens, who turns out to be an inappropriate choice for
spouse in a remote parish. Compounding
the marital crisis that this engenders is her untimely death, which leaves him
with the rearing of two preschool girls.
How does a trained clergyman, who must bear the burdens of others,
manage to maintain his poise and personal symmetry in the aftermath of this
loss?
The fact is, this one does
not. He goes into a kind of denial,
tries to step outside this sorrow and carry on his duties and functions, fixed
upon the Biblical promise, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength…They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not
faint.” He thinks he has a clear
sightline on what as a widowed minister he should do. “For the sake of God he would do his
job. (What else could he do?) . . .His
job was to stand in church with his shoulders back and his chin up, and make
his congregation understand that being a Christian was not a hobby. . .Being a
Christian meant asking yourself every step of the way: How can love best be served? His job was to be their leader, their
teacher, their example. A small parish
perhaps. Not a small job.” A great ideal this, but suppose those
shoulders have been bent too far for the chin to be raised, with a secret sense
of guilt contributing to that weight?
His life for a while becomes an exercise in unconsciousness and
concealment – not from his congregation but from himself. He preaches on Sundays, makes pastoral calls,
meets with the elders of the congregation, listens to peoples’ private woes,
and carries on an apparent friendship with neighbors and his community. But slowly the telltale signs of impotence
and disengagement from reality begin to be noticed by those he endeavors to
serve.
He is unaware of how
neglectful of little but vital things he has become. His home does not get the care it needs. His sermons begin to lose their thrust and
fire. And worst of all he avoids
confrontation with the stark needs and inner turmoil of his five-year-old
daughter, Katherine, in Kindercare.
Summoned to her school, he subtly resists the admonitions of the faculty
about her bizarre and disruptive classroom behavior since her mother’s
death. Tyler’s mother, who lives not too
far away, has taken over the supervision and expected rearing of his
two-year-old, Jeannie, and because of Jeannie’s absenteeism from her own home
he is in danger of losing all rapport with her and doesn’t seem to be aware of
it. A woman who confides in him over an
act of domestic abuse gets no help from him; he seems to forget she has told
him. Most enervating of all to the
quality of his clerical leadership is the emanation of gossip about his
allegedly inappropriate interactions with his housekeeper. Though the rumors are totally unfounded, he
seems unable to take any steps toward clearing them up. Best to ignore! Yeah, sure!
Tyler does not realize until
very late that what he is undergoing is not just a crisis of circumstance but
one of faith itself. Today (I’m not sure
about the 1950s) we call it “the dark night of the soul.” He dwells on the words of his favorite hymn,
“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide, the darkness deepens, Lord, with me
abide . . .” He tries to do devotional
readings. Bonhoeffer, Nouwen and
Kierkegaard contribute extensively to his private ruminations. One of Bonhoeffer’s last musings in a letter
to his mother before his execution comes to have special appeal to Tyler: “Now the dismal autumn days have begun and
one has to try and get light from within.”
There seems to be some figurative affiliation between these words and
what he senses is a coming showdown with his people over his continuing
suitability to shepherd them.
It was unthinkable back then for
ministers to succumb, even temporarily, to conspicuous human failing. They were supposed to be reputable examples
of self-control. Whoever heard of an
experienced, educated, fully trained, accomplished man of the cloth needing
pastoral counseling or therapy? Or, if
he needs them, he should get them in private and not involve the
congregation. But this congregation is
catalyzed by his personal crisis into some heightened self-knowledge of its
own, despite itself. And that is what
makes the book such a total absorption for me.
A total absorption and a very powerful, rewarding journey of the heart,
involving many parishioners who are at some measure of loss as to how to help
this man whose well is running dry!
Strout, a Pulitzer Prize
winner for another novel with a Maine setting, is so wonderfully gifted. She has an amazing grasp of human
nature. Several characters and their
crises of soul and conscience are also given inspection every bit as extensive
and poignant as Tyler’s. Any one of them
alone would be a suitable subject for a novel.
She paints with a very narrow brush, making us see the physical
environment, especially the New England winters, in all its somber and quiet
magnificence. Her prose is graceful and
impeccable and her pacing is so perfect that it makes gorgeous music right on
the printed page. Though her writing
style is lean, you get the feeling after you have read the entire book that she
has left out nothing. How all the
material threads out is worth the reading.
I highly recommend it for all sensitive and mature adults,
church-affiliated or not.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn
about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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