I hope never to be away from Prevailing Winds for nearly as long as I was all last month, but I’m finally feeling like myself — and I’m willing to consider that a good thing, however much some of you might disagree. God has been good, and is good whether I’m feeling well or not. In fact, it’s in times of illness and disability that I understand that most profoundly.
Helping with that has been my newfound fascination with Medieval historical fiction, stoked when a friend of mine gave me Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth.” I was puzzled, frankly, when Bonnie gave it to me; as far as I knew, Follett was just a British guy who wrote spy novels. I very rarely read fiction, although I resolved in the New Year to expand my reading horizons further than before — that is, beyond theology, feminist history, and political theory. Still, I hadn’t considered British spy novels, and I figured that growing up Catholic was more than sufficient exposure to the Medieval era.
But at the waterpark in August, the choice was between hurtling down the waterslides with my niece and her friend, or begging off because I had this book I just HAD to read. So I flipped open “Pillars” and was hooked by the second page. I devoured it and lamented its end, until I discovered the sequel, “World Without End.” I finished it during my illness and remembered a book that my then-15-year-old son called “lifechanging” — Stephen Lawhead’s “Byzantium.” I’m now midway through it and thrilled that he has a Medieval trilogy as well.
At this rate, I ought to be able to avoid vacuuming for at least the next year.
But I’ve found that all three books have strengthened my faith enormously. While the pryors, bishops, and prefects in the Follet books are generally scoundrels, the deficit in their characters serves to highlight the moral strength and courage in the humble monks and townspeople around them. And while I have certainly seen the “ecclesiastical leadership as scoundrels” theme played out around me over and over again in real life, Lawhead’s portrayal of genuinely devout monks and their superiors, and his exploration of the profoundly sincere piety they demonstrate, is really quite touching.
These books have deeply affected me. What’s surprising, though, is how much they’ve also confirmed the same passions and focus I initially strove to avoid by reading fiction. In each of these books, it’s clear — and not at all surprising — that the theology of the pre-Reformation Church was both a field of beauty and a path to loss, elements I hope to keep in mind in future posts which, while not Medieval in nature, will explore what’s right and what’s wrong with the Church today as I remember there truly is no new thing under the sun, only different ways the same old sins are played out.
An example? Well, in Follett’s books, it’s clear that gifted, outspoken, and passionate women of the Middle Ages, even those whose lives were infused by ineffable kindness and undeniable devotion, were the objects of suspicion and derision from the masculinist Church. These were the days when an unmarried, vocal woman was presumed to be a witch or seductress until proved dead. While we no longer burn women at the stake, or hang them in the public square, or strip them naked and stone them, those who see the image of the Holy One best expressed in and through a masculinist Church are still trying to choke the Holy Spirit’s working in the lives of women. Then as now, they may have stopped the women’s efforts — but there has never been a time in the history of the world, nor will there ever be an accurate account ever written, in which the Spirit of God was defeated by the sons of Adam.