Like reading a movie script, not a book

Kabul 24, the story “of a Taliban kidnapping and unwavering faith in the face of true terror,” by Henry O. Arnold and Ben Pearson, looked like it ought to be riveting. It wasn’t as exciting or compelling as I had expected, though the facts were all there.
The true account of the Christian workers who were targeted by terrorists back in 2001 has been told by two of them — Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry — in much publicized books and tours. Maybe that’s why a lot of this book felt like warmed-up leftovers.
One good aspect of going back to pick up the various loose ends that doubtless didn’t figure into the two most prominent team members’ accounts is that the OTHER 22 kidnap victims are given equal time. Honestly, until I encountered the book, it didn’t really dawn on me that a large group of workers for Shelter Now went through the trauma that Dayna and Heather did. In that respect, I am glad for the book’s publication.
The writer and reader in me did not like how author’s tone frequently drifted into a “telling not showing” mode. It distanced me, the reader, from feeling the sense of suspense and urgency that was, I am sure, part of the original experience. Instead of flipping pages because I just had to know what happened next, I found myself bored and even resentful about the way the author seemed to command me to feel tense; it felt manipulative and forced. Many times, the text read a bit like a movie script. Since this is a tie-in with a film, that might be expected.
Bottom line: if you haven’t already heard and read a lot of books about westerners caught up in terrorist situations, this story might be fascinating reading for you. But if you are familiar with those cultures and political situations, Kabul 24 is not going to deliver the suspense it promises.

Author’s hubris made ME “Green”

On the first page of this book, author Ted Dekker tells us history has been retold using simple metaphors. Examples he offers:
Light coming into darkness (the gospel of John, written by God);
A land called Narnia, set free by a lion (C.S. Lewis);
A Ring that would enslave the hearts of all (J.R.R. Tolkein).
Now, however, Dekker says we can “look to a new mythology to peel back the layers of truth.” He’s talking about his own book; talk about hubris.
Nonetheless, I thought I should give this book, a free copy from the publisher, a fair chance. I enjoyed the other titles in the series, though my pleasure had decreased with each installment. I object to his overuse of Dramatic Sentence Fragments, but that is a minor quibble.
Dekker’s writing tends to be screenwriter-ish, action taking precedence over fresh prose. Sometimes he stretches the limits of plausibilty, even for futuristic fantasy. But not every book is destined to be literary and readers can choose to collaborate with an ambitious and imaginative writer like Dekker. It’s OK for something to be what I call a “candy bar book,” a good, fast, not especially nourishing read.
Green is worse than occasional junk food. It’s deeply disturbing for more than the juvenile, voyeuristic-feeling romance scenes that marred the other titles. In Book Zero, we have vampires and a creepy tendency to dwell on evil, almost lovingly, with far more attention than is devoted to what is good, true, beautiful, etc.
Green, Dekker declares, can serve as a reader’s entrance into the series, or the conclusion. For me, it will definitely be the end.

Heartwarming, with a side of reality

What Difference Do It Make? Stories of Hope and Healing, By Ron Hall, Denver Moore and Lynn Vincent

I picked up “What Difference Do It Make?” partly out of curiosity, partly to bolster my “positive input” quota for the week. In terms of the latter, the book succeeded. A person would be a total curmudgeon to NOT feel inspired by the anecdotes in “What Difference Do It Make?” Readers will find heartwarming stories about children, the chronically ill, the amazingly generous, the resilient … you get the idea. But the co-author, former homeless man Denver Moore, has an authentic voice that reflects the hard knocks he weathered before teaming up with Ron Hall and his (deceased) wife. The occasional bite in Moore’s voice balances the heartwarmingness (which does get a bit syrupy at times; it’s a little bit like reading a year’s worth of Guidepost magazines all at once).
Now the criticisms. As far as answering questions, the book left me with more than it answered. My main question: what is the point of this book? Main story? The pretext of its organization is a bit thin. I knew it was a follow-up to an immensely popular best-seller — and it sure felt like a follow-up, with its over-designed pages and short, short chapters.
The best aspects of the title are the sections in which both authors recall hard-knock times. Those reminiscences left me wanting more, along with a stronger theme to tie the package together.
Nonetheless, I’d recommend the book. The world is not short of problems, and it wouldn’t hurt for most of us to take in some heartwarming, inspirational tales.

Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl

Notes from a Tilt-A-Whirl is like brain candy — or maybe spiritual megavitamins. Beneath the literary banter and quick wit, N.D. Wilson turns big ideas, deep ideas, over and over like a stone in the hands. The book is part meditation, part improvisation, and when you finish reading you feel a bit like a child who gobbled up a treat too quickly and is sad there’s nothing left.
As with his juvenile fiction titles (100 Cupboards, Leepike Ridge, Dandelion Fire), Wilson grabs the reader’s attention on the first page — “I’m a traveler.” And “I was born into the Carnival.” — and follows up with vivid, funny and often piercing observations about life on the “tilt a whirl” that we call home — a planet in a universe authored by God.
It’s hard to describe the scope of the book without sounding like a travel-agency brochure or giving in to the temptation to use words like “rollicking,” which comes close but doesn’t really describe the vigor and delight his essays display.
Wilson suggests we ought to replace the term “photosynthesis” with “Green Magic.” He contemplates the creation of skunks, rabbits, ants and wasps. He explains, in layman’s language, how no one really knows what anything is made from, and how this connects with the way God spoke the world into being. Now, when I wake up in the morning, I often think, “my leptons are standing up because God told them to!’
This thought makes me feel absurdly happy.
So did “Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl.”

Presents appear on train platform

Dec. 21, 2008

The alarm clock’s drone woke me at 4:45 a.m., and I snuggled deeper beneath the blankets just as my 12-year-old son flipped on the light. 

“It’s time to get up, Dad,” he said, jostling his father. “We’ve got to get ready to go!”

He sounded unreasonably happy about this fact. The boy has always been a cheery morning person — a good balance to my evil a.m. temper, and a helpful person to have around if you have to get up for a morning appointment. 

Although the air was chilly, I didn’t mind Friday’s early start: Andrae, my husband’s 21-year-old son (and therefore mine to claim, too), was headed home after five months at the Flint Hills Job Corps program in Manhattan. He would arrive on the morning train at the Garden City depot. His mother had to work, so his dad took on the duties of welcoming committee.

Warmed by a surge of nostalgia, I popped out of bed and wandered through the house. The train! Was it running on time?

“1-800-USA-RAIL,” I exclaimed. The toll-free phone number had resurfaced in my mind, bobbing up from the deeps — all right, 20 years — of time. “I’ll call to see if the train’s going to be late,” I told my husband. “I just remembered the number from when I used to take the train.”

During the years I lived in Chicago, the train trip home to Kansas was an annual event. A few days before Christmas, I’d board at Union Station, threading through the rush-hour crowds to claim a seat on the Southwest Chief for a 5 p.m. departure. The train would haltingly make its way through the rusty yards; it churned past weedy, run-down neighborhoods, and just when the houses spaced out to sit grandly on wide, snow-frosted lawns, the train eased into a blur of speed and headed for the Illinois countryside. 

Before we crossed the state line, the sun had set and passengers settled in for the night. I slept contentedly in my coach seat, knowing the stop in Kansas City would rouse me before the night ended. From there west, I would doze on and off, dimly attending to town names that grew increasingly familiar the closer we got to home. 

There aren’t that many stops, when you consider the far-flung arrangement of towns in the western half of the state. A generation ago, passenger trains serviced nearly every town that had a rail line. Liberal’s own Rock Island Depot housed a hotel, a bustling restaurant, and full-time staff including a telegraph agent. During WWII, servicemen arrived in town to train for the fledgling Army Air Corps. But as the highway system grew and times changed, train service gradually faded. In Minneola, the small (pop. 800) town where I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, train service was long gone. To catch the Amtrak train, you had to drive 20 miles north — and only two trains per day, one eastbound and one headed to Los Angeles, stopped for passengers. 

The Southwest Chief from Chicago generally entered Dodge City as the sun came up, and I’d see my parents waving from the platform. They greeted me this way regardless of the weather conditions or the punctuality of the train — sometimes it showed up as much as two hours late.

I grew up in a stable, happy home, and I have always known my mother and father love me. Yet there was something so tangible and determined about the way they would stand in the frigid Kansas air, a look of expectation and delight on their faces, that a renewed sense of comfort and security wrapped my heart with warmth every time I completed the journey. It was a wordless recognition of a deep truth: They love me so unreservedly, no matter what.  It’s so good to be home. Somehow, I knew it more completely each year as the Southwest Chief jolted to a complete stop. 

The years seem to have galvanized Amtrak operations a bit, because the recorded voice on USA RAIL informed me the train from Topeka to Garden City was running just one minute late.

“It should get in at 6:46,” I told my husband. “You’ll be right on time.”

Once they were on their way, I went back to bed. But I was too keyed up to sleep. Poetry and songs have recorded the push and pull of separation and reunion. Perhaps it is true that absence intensifies our feelings, that we don’t really know what we have until it is gone. But all that, ultimately, is just talk about something, observance rather than experience.

The phone rang, a last-minute call from Andrae. In the days leading up to his visit, he’d phoned many times, always to confirm the time of the trip, the time of arrival, the arrangements for someone to pick him up. 

“Is dad coming?” he asked. “We’re in Dodge City now. Has he left yet?”

“He’s on his way,” I said. “He should be there right when your train arrives.”

If you haven’t left home and returned, you might very well feel worried about this. How have things changed? Have I been forgotten? Do they miss me at all? Those questions might loom darkly, even when unspoken, when you are 21.

When the train pulls up to the station, though, those nagging worries fall away like the discarded wrapping of a Christmas gift. Anxiety and longing turn out to be unnecessary when you see your father’s face.  They might not realize it, but sons and daughters who come home for Christmas give their parents the thing we want most with their very presence. Years from now, they’ll look back and see that they, too, received something of inestimable value. 

I have no recollection of the presents I received from Mom and Dad during my Chicago years. But the image of them on the train platform, ready to welcome me home, is unfaded after all these years. 

Shot

This afternoon, I took the first of my therapy shots. It was so easy and painless that I felt foolish for having been so wary. Thus far, not a bit of the horrible side effects about which I’ve been warned. 

The nurse who helped me said, “It’s mind over matter,” and I’m inclined to believe her.  

We’ll see …

In which I begin to blog

They say newspapers are dying. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But I won’t be in the newsroom when we find out. After the surprise present I received on my fortieth birthday — multiple sclerosis — I’ve given up my peripatetic small-town newspaper reporter / slash / home educating mother ways.

In every way familiar to me, I am out of print. 

I’ve spent the last three months at home, quiet, still, relearning how to walk (successfully, though limpingly when I tire) and to write by hand and to type and learning anew how to live. 

It’s been rather ugly. At first, it was only my scratchy, stroke-victim-looking handwriting that was unattractive. Then it was my steroid-swollen limbs and face that made me shake my head in dismay. Those things passed and the discoveries went deeper; unable to rush about, I began to uncover  a dismaying number of bad habits and unconscious, incorrect beliefs that were Not Right and Not Nice.

I had no idea I was so adrenaline-driven, so performance-oriented, so sure productivity trumped nearly everything else. It’s great to be able to crank out copy and oversee your children’s education and bake homemade bread every day and read a couple hefty books each week … but if your way of life results in spots all over your brain, perhaps you need to rethink your priorities and your methods. 

It was clear I would have to submit to change. Initially, I lay in bed and prayed weird, frayed appeals — a mixture of thankfulness that my brain didn’t have cancer, that I would go on living, and fear that I would not be able to continue as the self I knew. How would it all work out? How could it all work out? How could I presume to be angry, when I had been spared an awful death? How could I not be angry that something was wrong with my brain? I like my brain. 

The day after  my diagnosis, my wise mother said, “It’s a new chapter in your life, Rachel,” and she was right. Only thing is, I don’t know what direction the plot is headed, or even what kind of story to expect. Is it a mystery? A tragedy? Some days it seems clear this must be comedy. Or perhaps a fable. I didn’t select this story and many days, I feel no desire to go further as it unfolds. 

But I’m not the Author — although I suppose, as a character I may come up with dialogue along the way. 

So here I am, writing for a virtual readership that can’t be measured by any circulation department, with no deadlines but those imposed by my own energy level. All in all, I suppose it could turn out to be better than newspaper. Perhaps the next installment will tell.