Today, Last Week, and One Year Ago

On accepting the trade-off, grieving together, and some recent favorite books.

I spend a decent amount of time scribbling notes to you in my head before finding the time to sit down and type them out. That’s what I was doing last Friday afternoon. I needed to be somewhere within the hour, but instead of gathering my things and heading for the door, I frantically peeled the peaches that had managed to grow juicier and more fragrant with neglect. The pits fell from the flesh with just the tap of my knife. (Peeling peaches always reminds me of my grandma.)

I mashed them up and cooked them down. I ladled the hot jam.

Two little jelly jars.

“I should have known this would happen,” I thought. And then I thought of you.

One year ago I wrote you a different August letter, my farewell to summer. My words back then were sticky with peach juice. My counter was lined with quart jars of Amish pickles, their seals blowing kisses. My garden was the most beautiful it had ever been.

It’s safe to say all foreseeable Augusts will find me with pickles and peaches. Maybe the day will arrive that I have better things to talk about. But what could be better than a ripened peach? Why wouldn’t we take pains to carry a few into Winter? This isn’t a spell worth breaking.

Last Friday, it seemed like maybe I’d traded produce for breathing room. The pandemic lingers, even rages, but for several reasons, this summer didn’t carry the same tremor as last. In this phase of life, it seems I can have some fun or I can have enough jam to last the year, but I can’t have both.

We cannot have our freedom, and eat it, too.

All the while, this damn virus undulates. Volleyball games are cancelled three hours before the whistle. I’m tracking the daily positivity rates again. I’ll run out of jam by November.

~

Saturday afternoon I was sitting in a hotel room not five miles from my house, stranded while the car is in the shop, purposely secluded in an effort to nudge my next book nearer to the finish line. A friend texted that one of our mutual friends passed away after a family member brought what was thought to be a head cold home from school. Claire died six days after testing positive. 46 years old. Fully vaxed. As cautious as anyone.

I shared my heartbreak on Instagram, because on top of this being one way we collectively process grief, I knew she would want a cautionary tale wrung from her sunshine-juicy, sweet-tart life. She was good fruit. The funniest and legitimately smartest person I’ve ever known.

I turned off comments after one hour. Tides of support swept in. Also, some cruelty. How I wish the mean ones weren’t those invoking God’s name. “This is proof that God does not exist” would probably roll right over me. What I cannot stomach are the variations of “God numbered her days,” or accusations that this was (incomprehensibly) her fault.

Though no longer surprising, it’s as painful and disorienting as ever to watch Christians attempt to baptize their cruelty.

Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on every single one of us.

Even as I type, I waffle. This is the sort of email I’m more likely to send The Secret Soup subscribers. Is is too personal? Too angry? Can we bear one more sad story? Does the virus deserve another feature?

For now, it’s what I have to offer. It is sad. I am sad. Maybe you are, too?

~

The jam is thicker than it was last year. I think that’s a good thing.

I’ll wait as long as I’m able to crack open a jar. I imagine we’ll be back to cozy sweaters by then. If I can hold out, there will be snow on the ground.

Looking into the future is no longer a purely hopeful practice. I will spread my toast with August fruit as we enter year three of this heartbreak. (THREE.)

Claire will still be gone, along with others. Grieving families will line our streets.

If we are still here, I hope we’ll have turned the wheel, even a little. I hope we’ll be softer, kinder, even by degrees. I hope we’ll be less interested in our own comfort, and quicker to consider who pays for it.

Death and becoming.

Doubt and pickles.

Strength for today and food for tomorrow.

We carry on.

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I planned to write two short paragraphs then dive into some books.

Oops.

Thank you for not being afraid of my sadness. I want this to always be a place of honesty. The best communities suffer and celebrate together, and you are part of mine.

Here are a few recent books that bowled me over. I read like a woman eating her last meal, grease on my chin, gnawing the bone. Trust when I say, this short list is extra-special, for wildly different reasons.

These are the ones changing the way I see the world (and my place in it) right now, August 2021, in the year of our Lord.

(All links are Bookshop affiliate links, which means you’ll pay a bit more and wait a bit long, but if you purchase from them you’re supporting excellent authors, subverting the Amazon/Bezos monopoly, and putting a few pennies toward the purchase of my next favorite reads, which I promise, as always, to share with you. No worries, all books are available anywhere else books are sold.)

The Girl with Big, Big Questions by Britney Winn Lee (Illustrated by Jacob Souva)

This picture book sequel to The Boy with Big, Big, Feelings is an absolute delight. My kids are older, but I’ll never forget the hours (weeks? months?) we spent hunkered down with tall stacks of books. This is one I’ll buy for shower gifts and just because. Here’s to teaching kids that questions are good! Here’s to inclusive illustrations! Here’s to building spaces for kids to see themselves as problem-solvers, as world-changers, as wholly beloved.

The Bible Unwrapped: Making Sense of Scripture Today by Meghan Larissa Good

Over the course of a year when I alternated between feeling legitimately afraid of and somewhat ambivalent about the Bible, this book landed in my hands like a melody. Cory called dibs, but when it was my turn I read it s l o w l y.

I learned a ton and the author is fantastically funny. If you’re feeling disillusioned by church-stuff or disoriented by some of the things coming out of the mouths of people you used to trust and all of it is making you feel wobbly; or, if you’re just finally asking the questions you were taught to stuff down and you’re scared of things unraveling (they don’t have to!) I cannot recommend this one highly enough.

“The Bible is more than only a story - it’s a story moving us and the world somewhere. It’s the revelation of who God is, of what God loves, of how the world is shaped…The Bible provides the essential information we need to creatively lean in. We were made for so much more than paint-by-number religion.”

“History is what takes shape on the wheel between our palms and God’s as we both press the turning clay of time and space.”

“The Bible tells the story of what is. It’s the true story of a world where hearing is imperfect, where motives are mixed, where evil exists, where bias lingers, where good intentions can go wildly astray. And where God persists in showing up.”

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

Brene Brown mentioned on this podcast interview with Clint Smith that she wishes she could make every person in America read his book. From God’s mouth, to her microphone, to my ear. I bought the book that very day. It’s weighty and gripping. The content, often difficult to read, is well-told. I’ve appreciated Clint Smith’s writing for a long time and this - his first book - exceeded my expectations.

Between the pages is the history I was never taught. Not in my White, one-light town. Not at my White, Christian college. Graduated with honors from both institutions, I never received more than a skim across the surface of America’s history with racism. This is a book that moves, across time and location, through lies and half-truths. Smith’s words draw us in - to plantations, and penitentiaries, and NYC.

“The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories…But in order for our country to collectively move forward, it is not enough to have a patchwork of places that are honest about this history while being surrounded by other spaces that undermine it. It must be a collective endeavor to learn and confront the story of slavery and how it has shaped the world we live in today.”

Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from my Daughter’s School by Courtney E. Martin

I’m regularly asked, especially this time of year, how and why we chose to send our kids to a large, low-income public school.* For anyone who really wants to know, I present this book. There’s comfort in solidarity. I deeply appreciate Courtney’s sensitivity and vulnerability in sharing how her own thoughts and behaviors were sometimes problematic. (So hard to do, but so important.) I wanted to clutch this to my chest and kiss the cover. Maybe I still will.

“The kind of friendship that can save democracy is not born of Pollyanna plots, but of sturdy humility and solemnity. White people like me have to prove ourselves trustworthy,” she writes.

Later, quoting Danielle S. Allen, “The politics of friendship requires of citizens a capacity to attend to the dark side of the democratic soul.”

I’d love to hear what you’re reading as the nights get longer. Are any of these books on your stacks? Will they soon be? Tell me everything.

I’d also like to know how you’re holding up. What’s helping you mark the time? How did your garden grow?

If you’re among the grieving, picture me sitting with you. This part doesn’t have to be rushed. We can shake our fists, cry our eyes out, and laugh at the memories, all within the same hour.

With that, I’ll leave you with one of Claire’s famous BRBs… (stands for “Be right back”)

Fine, I left you with four.

With love,

Shannan

PS - It’s never too late to join us over at The Secret Soup!

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* I’ve mentioned this in several places over the years, but in the spirit of full disclosure, Silas is starting his third year at a small, Mennonite Christian school, after five years at our Title I elementary school. These decisions are never without complexity. I’m not sure the day will ever come that I don’t feel tension in knowing that while his needs are now met in a way that was not possible before, there are so many kids like him left struggling.