Wearing God

Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God

Lauren F. Winner (2015, HarperOne)

       Have you ever noticed that the Church is in a rut, when it comes to images for God? My home people, the Episcopalians, frequently observe the Good Shepherd in stained glass, psaltery, and hymns; only slightly less popular is a royal God, even if we are letting go of a gendered one. But what experience have most of us with either shepherds or kings? Practically none. 

        In Wearing God, Lauren Winner suggests that other, more familiar, options are available in the Bible, and sanctioned by generations of commentators and poets: God might be as close as a warm robe, as intimate as scented oil, as nourishing as bread or as intoxicating as wine. As fleshly as all this sounds, and it is, it's also intensely scholarly. "Your guide in this exploration is a bookworm who can happily get lost for a few days on a research trail, and I sometimes bring the words of anthropologists or historians or literary critics to bear on our ruminations." 

        It's no surprise that the chapters of Wearing God had their first lives as divinity school lectures. I have never paid much attention to the Christian midrash, the tradition of commentaries and commentaries on commentaries, but, of course, that's what divinity students read. Winner introduces us not only to St. Augustine and Julian of Norwich, but Ephrem of Syria, Anselm of Canterbury, and Theodore of Mopsuestia; Charles Wesley, John Donne, and Christina Rossetti; and plenty of others who are still walking around the planet. The extensive end notes constitute a vast field full of rabbit holes, for those whose appetite is whetted. 

        Amid these treasures, Winner's own writing gets a little lost, which is a pity, because she gives good value. She does not quite persuade me to find God in fragrance; I'm just not wired that way. Nor in clothing, though the picture of God tenderly clothing Adam and Eve in skins before their exile is arresting. Even a moment, though, of "what would it be like, to be clothed in the Divine?" might be salutary. Perhaps this question, or one like it, will snag on our consciousness until we turn and face it. Do I ever look or feel as though God dressed me today? The more I don't want to dwell on that, the more I probably should. Winner says, "I suspect that if I could receive this, something small but important would change. I suspect that the way I inhabit myself would be different if my spinning, whirling brain could receive this, if my heart could receive it, if my body could receive it."

      A child-bearing God, a laughing God, a God who is soothed by the fragrance of burning incense all seem strange, in a way that may stretch our imagination. Perhaps the most profound image of all, because it's the most commonplace, is friendship with God. In what ways is that like all our friendships? "I know that friendship both requires and breeds honesty–perhaps foremost honesty with myself. When I am lying to myself (as I have been known to do, usually about something important–otherwise why bother?), I am not available for friendship." And so it is with the One from Whom no secrets are hid. "Also, I am uneven. I am inconstant. Yet I have begun to grow as a friend. I am less inconstant than I once was." Friendship with God, like any other, is enriched by the simple act of showing up, and sometimes acting together. 

       I think Winner makes her case for trying on different images of God. "The Bible's inclusion of so many figures for God is both an invitation and a caution. The invitation is to discovery: discovery of who God is, and what our friendship with God might become. The caution is against assuming that any one image of God, whatever truth it hold, adequately describes God." Maybe we'll be able to take a break from trying to describe the Infinite Holy, and break through to experiencing It. 

Email edition May 1 2020 

Mohawk

Mohawk

Richard Russo (Vintage, 1986)

        My November piece on the essays of Richard Russo brought me around to his novels, of which Mohawk is the first. It's set in Mohawk, New York, somewhere north of Albany, like the Gloversville of Russo's youth. In 1967, it's a town where not much is happening, though the tanneries and glove shops are still in operation. Mohawk is full of men who drink all night and lose at poker. In the morning, they show up at the Mohawk Grill, where Harry pours coffee and keeps an eye on the village idiot.

       Anne Grouse shares an apartment with her son, Randall, upstairs from her parents' flat. Anne's father is dying of the emphysema he contracted from a lifetime working with leather; her mother is content only in the company of her older sister, with whom she shares many a pleasant afternoon complaining about their respective daughters, and imagining that they had always been close. (Mather Grouse is always given his full name, while Mrs. Grouse is always Mrs. Grouse.)

      Anne's cousin, Diana, takes care of her mother and her husband, Dan, who uses a wheelchair. Dan and Anne have the misfortune to be enamored of each other, beginning just after it was too late to do anything about it. They each married the person they were supposed to marry, but the suppressed sentiment lingers powerfully.

      Anne's ex-husband, Dallas Younger, is a man of spectacular unreliability, and the archetypal male Russo character. Dallas is not good at much, besides losing things and letting people down. "Dallas, always careening about town, out of control, always landing on his feet, always vaguely wondering about the sound of screeching tires and crashing metal wherever he went, never suspecting a causal connection."

       The town ages as the characters do; we see it again in 1972, after the destruction of the moribund old hospital, and the arrival of marijuana and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Randall has gone off to college, only to drop out and come home a draft dodger. Anne's father has died, and she's given up hope of moving away for a better job. Dallas has left the garage and started working for a bookie. All of the seams are showing.

       Not only does Russo make us care about these people and their dead-end days, he shows us that they wouldn't care if we care or not. They're living their own lives, that's all; the men playing the numbers, and the women waiting to be loved, or even heard. Randall takes up with a local girl whose lack of curiosity he finds oddly refreshing. "He had attempted, just once, to explain to her the nature of ethical dilemmas, but gave up once he realized her own daily life had little to do with choice and probably never would."

       Russo respects his characters, and loves their town. The comic effects he achieves by knowing them better than they know themselves can be sharp, but they're tender. It's a God-like point of view that gives one hope for what God is like. 

Published by email.

Any Good Books,

April 1 2020