Reading Colm Toibin's new novel, Brooklyn. About the emigration of a young Irish woman to the United States, and the experience of separation, loss, disorientation and soul-testing loneliness that we call homesickness. Tobin is a beautiful writer, and writes about women's experience with sensitivity, insight, and a counsellor's sympathy, combined with an admirer's confidence in the resilience and dignity of this woman's ways of meeting circumstance and change. It doesn't make much sense to review a book only a third of it read, so I'll come back to this novel later.
But even what I've already read shows why novels are essential reading for people whose calling is to the care of others through pastoral friendship. I'm often asked about good books on pastoral theology, or for recommended titles that get to the heart and the point of what real pastoral care is. You often see the skeptical, disappointed, even dismissive expression on the face when instead of the latest theological heavyweight, or practical how to do it manual, or popular pastoral care in twenty minutes kind of book, (has anyone written pastoral care for Dummies yet:))you offer a list of three or four novels. Now I'd want to add biography, poetry, and some philosophy as other required resources (alongside obvious pastoral theology texts), but for now sticking with novels, here's one novel of one writer I learned from and still do. (Going to do several more over the next couple of weeks).
The Good Husband, Gail Godwin. A magnificent central character, Magda, is a literary scholar, a charismatic liberated and utterly impressive woman, is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Her husband, Francis, who happily lives in her shadow, becomes the carer of a stellar woman facing the greatest challenge of them all. No it isn't sad, morbid, dark - it is humane, compassionate, incisive. Godwin dissects the responses and attitudes of those who come and go, gather and stay, accompany or stay away from Magda in her last months. But the faithfulness, the cost and the self-effacing but effective presence of the good husband holds the balance of a relationship that is both blessed and doomed. And I can't think of a more nuanced and gentle exploration from different perspectives, of the experience of dying, in any pastoral theology book. The wrong things said, the crass questions, the gentle unintended kindnesses as well as the intentional acts of care, the tongue tied visitor embarrassed by pain and diminishment as well as the caring silence of the one who simply sits, holds hands and speaks only in sounds of reassurance, and then the practical carers who get things done without fuss and without intruding, the medical procedures at times humiliating, at times restoring, and all this told by a novelist who should be given an honorary doctorate in the humanities for the sheer humanity with which she writes.
I did a presentation on this book at a gathering of newly accredited ministers. It would make a too long post. I'll adapt it and post it over a couple of days next week - unless of course broadband is up and running at my new hoose up in Aiberdeen, like!
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