Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Book(s) of Life

All of my life I’ve been a voracious reader. As a kid there weren’t many books in our house but the Bible was there so I read it several times. There was also an encyclopedia set so I read it several times too. At some point my parents took pity on me reading the same things over and over so Mom started picking up “The Hardy Boys” series. I only read them once.

I found the library and discovered Graham Greene. God what I writer! It was with him that I developed the habit of reading an author’s entire catalogue once I discovered one. So I read every one of his books. Not in succession but I read him out and still do that if I like somebody.

Next came Hemingway and his goal to write the one true sentence. And to live the one true life! Everything about Hemingway influenced me …the way I write, live, lust and travel. “There’s no one true thing. It’s all true.” Ernest did it all and I want to do it all too.

In Seminary I overdosed on books. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “There is an old Puritan saying ‘ Sellyour bed and buy a book” to which I add, “’just make sure it’s a good book.” I sold everything I had to buy more books, hocking my High School ring, guitars, clothes, whatever.

And Seminary gave me Frederick Buechner my all-time favorite writer. Mixing religion and literature in ways similar to Graham Green, Buechner took religion much further. Green explored how tarnished religion is, Buechner saved it by exploring how blemished holiness is anyway.

It was at the end of my Louisville days that I started writing. My first book came out during the move from there to Tybee. And I discovered something about myself. I can’t write and read at the same time. Somewhere I learned that Hemingway couldn’t either so I felt ok about it.

I was in Daytona Beach when “The Society of Salty Saints” arrived. There is a photo somewhere of me sitting on the beach, brown and tan, grinning like a fool and holding it beside my face. Over the next decade the books poured out of me. Seven bookswere published in ten years. That’s a lot.

When I wasn’t writing I continued to read but I really lightened up. I’d drag my chair, cooler, Chelsea and a book to the beach most every day on Tybee. This time it was John McDonald introducing me to “Travis McGee” and Carl Hiaasen presenting “Skip Whiley and Skink”. I loved the outrageousness of the writing.

I wrote my last book “Tour of Homes” proving to myself that I can a big one. It’s big. Too big really, but it gives a fictional account of the first ten years of Union Mission. I don’t like the cover much but publishers choose those things
more than writers do. I like the book though.

Then something happened.

My work got big. I was spending too much time writinggrants, appeal letters and newsletter stories. I loved the work so I didn’t mind much but looking back Union Mission kidnapped my writing and reading like it eventually did a great many other things.

Those last years the only things that I read were studies, the stupid stuff Congress puts out and everything I could on

fundraising because if you’re not raising money you’re dying in the non-profit world which is all about stopping people from dying.

But if I wasn’t reading these other things, creativity was slipping away. And Union Mission gladly took it.

Then something else happened. I discovered blogging and Facebook. I started writing again. At first it was all business but then I started “freebasing” again. I was
writing about the things that were really happening to me … the ridiculous and the sublime … the humorous and the holy …the hurt and joy of living.

Jerry Rainey, the Board chair who chooses to remain anonymous, came to see me to why I was blogging about changing a flat tire in my drive way with Goddess licking my face. He demanded to know how that helped Union Mission?

I remember thinking of Hemingway’s line “It’s all true” before answering him. “Because it’s what happened Jerry.”

Then I left and this Sabbatical happened and I kept writing.

Last Friday night I was having dinner with Bob and Margaret Handleman and she and I started talking about Hemingway. She’d just finished a new novel on Hadley Richardson, Ernest’s first wife in Paris. The next day Bob brought me the book.

And a miracle happened.

For the first time in a couple of years, I’m reading again.

I’m also writing every day and will eventually get around to making them books again.

But it feels good to be back, reading the truths of others.

And writing my own.