Today’s author is Prince of Peace member Karen Carr.
Thirty-eight years ago I finished my college degree at the University of Minnesota where I majored in Women’s Studies and English. I was 29 years old and thrilled [and somewhat relieved] to complete my Bachelor’s degree by age 30. I was fortunate to work with and study under Professor Toni McNaron who won numerous teaching awards over her long career. After graduation I learned that she offered several book study groups and since COVID she’s been offering at least 2 zoom classes a year when we, mostly women, read books by Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, David Malouf among others. These are not easy books to read. Yet she leads the class in such a way that I find myself connecting so much of the literature to the current world and it truly expands my thinking.
We’re now reading David Malouf’s novel, Remembering Babylon. It’s a story rich in textural atmosphere with a cast of fully developed characters. The book’s main theme is how we “Other” people, often just to make ourselves feel superior to them which may give us a false sense of pride. All of this is antithetical to Christianity.
The story is loosely based on a real story of a British teenager who is shipwrecked off the coast of Australia and lives with an aboriginal tribe for 16 years. In this way he becomes a person of two worlds, “It was the mixture of monstrous strangeness and unwelcome likeness that made Gemmy Fairley so disturbing to them…” Them being the white British communities coming together in the newly colonized Queensland.
The story is painfully realistic. The reason I write about it here is that in Malouf’s description of the land and then of God as a gardener on page 130, “For there is a truth here and it is this: that no continent lies outside God’s bounty and his intention to provide for his children. He is a gardener and everything he makes is a garden.” the theme of endurance shines through.
God gives each of us the ability to see beyond what we’ve seen before which allows us – even as we are unsure of our own place in the world – to welcome others or not welcome others. Even as the characters in the story struggle to fit in to what they perceive is their place in the world, they are blind to the bounty before them and fearful of the people who have already made the land their own for centuries.
Prayer for today:
God, you have diligently created a bountiful place for us to thrive in community. Continue to guide us in your love and patience to welcome each other with open and trusting arms. To nurture one another with your kindness and thoughtfulness, to appreciate the many gifts we have already received including the gift of endurance. Amen