Graced occasions
A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. By Ron Hansen. HarperCollins, 267 pp., $25.00.
I am never quite prepared when someone wants to know what I have been reading lately. I have always wished I were the sort of person who could say, "Well, there's Brevard Child's new commentary on Isaiah, of course, and then I'm rereading the complete works of Kierkegaard just for fun." Instead, I close my eyes so that I can visualize the titles of the novels lying beside my bed and choose one that will not embarrass me.
The truth is that I have always reached for fiction or poetry before theology. When I was little, my parents did not take me to church but to the public library. Every Saturday, I walked through the doors of that cool, quiet place and felt reverence settle over me. The whole world was available to me there, as well as worlds beyond this one. All I had to do was reach up to slide a volume off the shelf, and I could go to China with Pearl Buck, or visit the lonely planet of the Little Prince.
