Why I Read

Last week I started sharing why I read and to briefly review, it is based in the past, present, and future that books bring me.

Last Thursday I wrote about how the past was a reason I read. I spoke of my faith’s past, the world’s past, and my nation’s past.

I also read, as noted in the tag line of this blog that appears above “to experience the present.”

Now I stretch the present a bit back say, since the 1980′s? And this is where I love memoirs, especially those whose stories go back at least 32 years. (What an arbitrary number!)

I have always found people interesting and a story from college days reminds just how much I study people. I had a wonderful philosophy professor who lived, at the time in a geodesic dome (a la’ Buckmaster Fuller) and looked like philosopher. He was a simple and unpretentious person who was truly counter-cultural but in a gracious and not gruff way.

In the early 70′s he took a sabbatical and visited several communes in the American West including one in Colorado. One day he was invited to go to the zoo and declined. A week or so later he was again invited to go to the zoo again and decided to go along.

The zoo was the local suburban mall where they went and people watched!

Over 20 years ago I was engrossed in Lee Iacocca’s stories of his time in the American automotive industry from the Ford Mustang to the Chrysler turnaround. I have read President Obama’s first book Dreams from My Father that describes his life up to the point of the launch of his political career.

I have recently spent time ‘watching’ Carolyn Weber as she wrestled with issues of faith as an Oxford graduate student in her book Surprised by Oxford: Ian Morgan Cron and his journey through the murkiness of his family life with a mysterious father and the alcoholism that affected them both in Jesus, The CIA, my father, and me; and Jennifer Wilson and her family’s journey to Croatia to discover her family’s past and coming to terms with suburban American life in Running Away to Home. Each of these books have enriched my thinking and understanding of faith, the past, the present, the future, the big questions of Why? How? When?

Some perhaps find such writing ‘boring’ but the memoir, which I think tends to be a first person, takes us on a journey through a person’s eyes and the reveals to me at least,  the common humanity we all have as we face as we navigate life and its transitions.

See you behind the page!

Thursday Thoughts: My dad and me

My parents and I in May, 1962

It has been over 20 years since my father died. He was 59 and died of what appeared to be a second heart attack two weeks after having his first one on my anniversary. I was just sitting down to finish a project for one of the grad school classes I was taking as graduation approached, a week and a half away, when the call came from my mom of what had happened and that she was told to have family come home.

I rushed home by plane the next morning and found him in the hospital with a drainage tube up his nose and down into his stomach. Coherent but tired, I watched the concern on the cardiac RN’s face as she ultrasounded what turned out to be a very damaged heart.

I spent the next, and for me, the last, five days with him in the room. The next time I would see him was on the gurney at the funeral home with his body wrapped tight in a white linen. I wept as I laid my hand on his bare shoulder and got the closure I needed.

The line was long at the funeral home as people paid respects to my mother and I. Some of the men that he worked with I met for the first time and they praised his character and work ethic.

***

When I recently read and reviewed Ian Morgan Cron’s memoir, Jesus, My Father, the CIA and me, his description of the book’s cover photograph caused me to think about the photograph that appears at the beginning of this post. (The review is here:  http://jimkane.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/book-review-of-ian-morgan-crons-jesus-my-father-the-cia-and-me-a-memoir-of-sorts/ )

It also caused me to think about my own, silent, and, at time, difficult relationship with my dad.

I don’t think that one has to have a father who worked for the CIA to have a challenging relationship with your dad. Now my father was a Korean War vet who had a flame thrower blow up in the tent he was it as his buddy was cleaning it and who, I was once told, was thought for dead after hitting the ground as he came off patrol, when an enemy mortar attack took place covering him in dirt.

But he was a perfectionist and quick with numbers. I, other other hand, was always sticking my nose in a book, writing stories back then, and engaged in imaginative play. It was not often a good mix.

As I entered adulthood, our relationship improved and he became, over the course of my four years of college, one of the smartest men I ever knew!

***

In my last conversation on the phone with him, two days before his death, and as I was looking for another ministry position after being out of the ministry for four years, he said to me in a quiet and caring tone of voice that I had never heard, would never hear again, “Son, I am praying that the Lord will direct you to the right position.” What a wonderful last set of words to say to your child.

These are my Thursday Thoughts

Book Review of Ian Morgan Cron’s Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir…of Sorts

“How can you tell when you’ve crossed the meridian that divides hatred and forgiveness? Is it when the dirt path beneath your feet, frozen by hard winter’s bitter wind, softens under summer’s grace? Or is it when words you’ve worked so hard long to free stroll out of the prison of your heart without your help and to you amazement speak for themselves?”

So asks Ian Morgan Cron, husband, dad of three, Episcopal priest, and a son of an alcoholic CIA agent, at the end of his memoir Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me, a memoir that chronicles his journey of 50 years to make sense of his father and peace with him as well.

Written in a blend of both first and third person narrative, it is a story  about cloak and dagger of the relational kind and not the kind related to national security. It is about a son and father who lives in privileged areas of the county but among such persons because of the precariousness of their financial status. It also about grace, God’s grace, showing up in the words of wise priests, in the stain of a leaky ceiling, in the flashback memories of drunken binges, and in the firm but loving stand of a counselor who ‘speaks the truth in love’ regarding Cron’s un-admitted alcoholism. It is a book about parenting and the challenges of finding grace and meaning in dysfunction and addiction that exist in families of all backgrounds.

Cron’s honest telling of not just his father’s life, who was a mystery and whose work was a mystery as he describes the moments after his father’s memorial service, but his own, includes some key insights into family life for today that are valuable for anyone and everyone: “Boys without fathers, or boys with fathers who for whatever reason keep their love undisclosed, begin life without a center of gravity. They float like astronauts in space, hoping to find ballast and a patch of earth where they can plant their feet and make a life. Many of us who live without these gifts that only a father can bestow go through life banging from guardrail to guardrail, trying to determine why our fathers kept their love nameless, as if ashamed.”

I had trouble putting this book down and I read it in only a few days because Cron’s story is one that many persons will relate to, as I could in parts.  A worthy read and one that I think should be read by those who are preparing for ministry due to the subject matter and the need for pastors to be aware of their own family dynamics.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free as an ebook from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their Blogger Review program called Book Sneeze (www.booksneeze.com) I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”