I don’t often read books about spirituality, but I do like novels with a bit of mysticism or overtones of myth, a little Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, the biography of the Buddha. So, when I heard about Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward at a dinner party I was intrigued.
Rohr, who looks a bit like a Buddha, is an unusual Catholic priest, who pulls his ideas from many traditions. He talks about the original teachings of Jesus, but Homer’s Ulysses is also a favorite. He includes women, Julian of Norwich and Annie Dillard; there are quotes from Native Americans, Muhammad, the Buddha.
His main idea is that the tasks of the first half of life are different from the tasks of the second. In the first half of life, young people ideally flourish in a family and community that is loving, secure, and has boundaries. They concentrate on themselves, learn how to get along, and build their identities according to the established framework of their culture.
As they mature, it is time to reconsider the comforts of the familiar, think independently, find the true self, and give to others. Moving to this second phase can be painful; people who begin to think or behave differently from their peers are often discouraged. Others don’t want to change but are pushed out of the comfortable nest by circumstance. All stumble and fall, but this zig zag path is the way forward, or upward. My interpretation is probably more secular than the author had in mind as he talks quite a bit about the spirit that is doing the guiding.
Rohr’s ideas are not new, as he says himself, but he does a good job of gathering and presenting them in an understandable and memorable way. This is a short book, dense, and like many religious and philosophical books, sometimes obscure. But the main points do emerge and offer timely ideas to second-half-of-life individuals.
One advantage of a book club is that sometimes you have to read a book for the second time. You have already read it, but now the group has chosen it. How will your opinion change?
This happened recently with Gravel Heart by nobel prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah. I read and wrote about it two years ago (Skillful Writing). Then, I was interested in the plot. What is the family secret that causes so much trouble? This time, I knew the answer and could emphasize setting and character.
I could enjoy the visual details of the setting, a village in Zanzibar, where our hero, Salim, grows up. Later, when as a young man he travels to London to study, there is the immigrant experience he shares with other single men from Africa.
There was time to think about the characters’ behavior. Why does Salim’s father react to betrayal by withdrawing into permanent self-imprisonment? Salim, despite his apparent advantages, cannot find a place between his two worlds. Maybe “gravel heart” has a more subtle meaning than the obvious selfish or evil intent.
A totally delicious superhero! Elizabeth Zott always says what she thinks and does what is right. Of course, she is brilliant, beautiful, assured, the star of a television cooking show, a dedicated rower, and a gifted chemist.
In addition to this Wonder Woman, Bonnie Garmus in Lessons in Chemistry also gives us a fairy godmother and a daughter nicknamed Mad, an allusion to the comic books.
But there is lots of science. Eizabeth’s research is an esoteric subject, abiogenesis (the study of the origin of life from an inanimate substance). Her popular television show, Supper at Six, deals with the intricacies of the chemistry of cooking as well as turning out great dinners.
Raised by her bootstraps in the 1950s, independent Elizabeth does not suffer fools gladly. She has few friends, never mind dates. But then she meets Calvin Evans, Pulitzer Prize nominee for chemistry. A soulmate! However, as Elizabeth tells us, life is chemistry and chemistry is change, and change comes for Elizabeth leaving her a single mother of a daughter.
This delightful story with its quirky characters is more than a fun read. Garmus has a point to make and like any good teacher she repeats it often. “Sometimes I think that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America he wouldn’t make it past noon…Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race…No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve” When Elizabeth is congratulated on being forward thinking for wearing trousers, she congratulates the man right back for wearing them also.
Is there really a need for another book about equal opportunity for women and the elimination of harassment in the workplace? As our heroine says, to educate we must repeat, repeat, and repeat.
One of the little dilemmas in life is figuring out how to deal with the excellent work of someone you don’t respect or just plain dislike.
Should I ignore Gauguin’s paintings because he abandoned his wife and five children to run off to the South Seas? Should I not support the Audubon Society because its founder was racist? Should I give up my Tesla because I dislike Elon Musk?
Recently, this question has come up in publishing about an author who is not guilty herself of doing anything, except by association. Adania Shibli is Palestinian but neither a member of Hamas nor a terrorist. Yet, an award celebration for her new book, Minor Detail, was cancelled by a prestigious book fair because of her nationality and its subject, which is the gang rape of a young woman by members of the Israeli army. Should this book be shelved until a more appropriate time? Or is doing so the equivalent of book banning?
Pamela Paul, in a thoughtful article for the NYT, “A Chill Has Been Cast Over the Book World,” October 18, gives a stirring answer.
“Revenge of the old people!” What a great phrase. I came across it in a NYT article, “Cher on Her First Christmas LP,” by Melena Ryzik, October 17, 2023.
Cher is talking about the many older music groups that are putting out new albums and having a resurgence. The younger generations are finally starting to realize that oldtime rock n roll really is the best.
