Moments With a Classic

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com

Every summer I pick a classic to read for the first time or re-read if it has wandered into the mists of memory a bit too far. In the past I have toiled hoisting the mast and managing the roiling madness of an angry sea while re-reading Moby Dick, my absolute favorite novel deserving at least one re-read. I’ve ridden through the dust of the desert and shadowy mountains in Death Comes for the Archbishop, and I languished down the Mississippi with an errant boy and his escaping slave pal in Huckleberry Finn, to cite only a few of the escapades I have enjoyed as summer reading over the years.

One should pick a summer read every year to whittle down the list of books you may have missed earlier in life and make your choice an enjoyable experience. I heard a story on NPR recently that a man who was an inveterate reader and kept a list of all the books he had read in his adult life. He died in his nineties, I believe, and the list included around 1,000 books! His son was interviewed and shared that his father taught his children many lessons from the books he had read. I, too, have kept a list of books I have read beginning in 1962, and should you think me a bit obsessive compulsive, Carol Burnett, the revered comedian, has kept a list of famous actors with whom she has worked in all her 92 years!! 

Let me tell you about my summer classic this year. I read Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, a Canadian writer of exceptional notoriety in her day. I’ve always thought this book was a pre-romance novel for junior high girls and I never got into it. I was wrong. A friend, my age, told me she thought the same thing, but her book club assigned it for their summer read and she became enthralled with it. So, I had to read it.

First of all, it is an adult book published in 1908. The writing is excellent. Montgomery sets the story in Prince Edward Island, the eastern edge of Canada where grandparents raised her after her mother died and her father sought work elsewhere. The main character of the book, Anne Shirley, is an orphan mistakenly sent by the orphanage to a brother and sister who run a farm and had requested an orphan boy hoping he could help with the farm work for the aging couple. Second, Marilla, a stern woman, and Matthew, her laconic, easy-going brother relent to keeping Anne whose excitable imagination and endless chatter turn their lives into a kind of loving chaos for several years. Anne grows into a young woman, educated, and eventually refined by the experiences of youth with all its pains and joys.

Reading this warm and engaging story during this summer brought me some peace and balance otherwise obscure under the heap of political unrest and down right evil taking place nationally and globally. It was a sort of ‘comfort food’ for the mind and soul. And yet it wasn’t Pollyanna-ish. There was pain, misunderstanding, economic struggles, in spades. But there was also dogged perseverance, humor, conviction, and joy in equal amounts. In the end, joy and generosity win. Anne is a pure spirit. She changes a whole community simply by appreciating all of creation and all human beings, even the surly and sharp-edged persons, “meaner than second skimmings,” as Mrs. Lynde, Marilla’s best friend, described one neighbor. Anne’s inquisitive nature asks of the impatient Marilla, “How are you going to find out things if you don’t ask questions?” And in a moment of ecstasy she says, “Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive – it’s such an interesting world!”  A few years later she still reflects on the buoyancy of beauty around the farm shouting, “Dear old world, you are very lovely, and I am glad to live in you.” Sometimes she laments the mischief she causes and at the end of the day adds to her prayer: “I’m so happy to put the mistakes of my day to rest. Tomorrow is already beautiful. It has no mistakes in it.” In telling a friend that it is so hard to follow the rules all the time, she says, “Some people are naturally good, you know. Others are not. I’m one of the others.” 

When I was a child, my mother would listen to the raptures of my day as I rattled on about classmates or teachers or my escapades to the neighboring sheep farm or riding the horse there or the story, I was thinking of writing next and so on. I’d be drying the supper dishes and sweeping the floor chattering non-stop; then heating the baby food for my little sister. On and on the stories went: one to another, a disjointed narrative of my life on a given day with my mother nodding affirmatively, up to her elbows in dish water suds. I was a non-stop 78 RPM recording on the Victrola. I was Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables. And, yes, I was “one of the others.”

Reflection

We all need respite from the challenges of the web of life confronting us each day. I have heard many people say, “I don’t watch the news,” or “I watch only local news.” But what do you put in place of that time? Does it feed your mind and soul? Some people add streamed movies or shows on their iPads. Anything to beat the news. I suggest you not abstain from the news; we must know what is going on to confront evil with solid faith and virtuous hope. Sometimes a good work of fiction or poetry will help. Good writing smooths the edges of anxiety and provides moments when you can really depart from ‘bad news’ and enter the realm of imagination and ‘good news.’ Pick a work of fiction to get lost in this Fall. It could be a classic or a recent choice on the New York Times best-seller list.

Add such reading to your scriptures for fuller, deeper treatments of God’s work in the human heart. 

Can you suggest some books our readers might enjoy? I can’t wait to hear from you. Happy reading to my Anonymous Angels and All My Readers.