I had finished writing this post but hadn’t gotten a chance to record it yet when I heard the news that people were shot, injured, and killed at Brown University. Thoughts and prayers, yes, but without systemic change, our “unthinkable nightmare” will continue to be routine.

Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me. - Isabel Allende

Hello Friends,

I don’t know what to think this holiday season when I see Santa dressed in camouflage, looking happy to go to war. Hasn’t this year been hard enough? Who thinks this is fun?

Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Immigrants have been on my mind both because of what is happening to them under the Trump administration and because I hope to write a novel with IRL elements of some relatives. This week, while I was baking a lot of cookies, I decided to listen to a children’s audiobook because I wanted to see how the migrant child’s POV was handled. Here’s a little summary from a banned books poster on the Intercultural Research Development Association website.

Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan

The novel focuses on Esperanza, the only daughter of wealthy Mexican parents, and follows the events that occur after her father’s murder. It is a story of love, loss, and hope, set in Mexico during the 1930s, just after the Mexican Revolution. Grade level: 5-6.

Actually, a lot of the book takes place in Southern California after Esperanza and her mom are forced to flee Mexico and their privileged lives there. They become farm workers. And that’s why I was interested in the novel.

Esperanza has been withdrawn from schools in various states and districts. I’d say I can’t imagine why, except that I can. What I mean is, there is no good reason for the bans. No foul language, no sexual content (not even ‘clean’ romance), no violence, nothing age inappropriate. But, like most banned books, it empathizes with ‘the other.’ The migrant farm workers. It also discusses unions and strikes in a simple way. It looks at racial and cultural prejudice. On the whole, it’s a very good novel that helps pre-teens understand desperate people in the Great Depression and what it is like to work on a vast agribusiness farm. The only fault I found in it—this is a spoiler, but I can’t imagine you are going to read a book for ten and eleven-year-olds—is that a teenage friend of Esperanza’s somehow goes all the way back to Aguascalientes in Central Mexico (over 1,600 miles one way) and retrieves Esperanza’s grandmother (abuela) and returns with her to Kern County, CA. I wanted to know how in the world he achieved that, but there are no details. I think even a ten-year-old might question it. However, on the whole, it’s a wonderful book for kids. So if you’re looking for a gift book, thumbs up. (If you’re looking for a teen/YA gift book, consider mine, Keep Sweet.)

Digression: I’m thinking about my sentence “Esperanza has been withdrawn from schools in various states and districts.” In Spanish, esperanza is hope. So, yeah. And while you might not think of a book being removed from a school district as a ban, the book is banned from that district. It doesn’t have to be a national ban to use the word. In addition, in Utah, if a book is banned in three districts, then it is removed from all public schools, AND they didn’t allow students to bring copies of those banned books on campus to read until advocacy groups pressured them into changing the rules. Big bans! It’s like they can’t tell the difference between reading and smoking weed. Between bringing your favorite book to campus and bringing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

* Catholics in power in the Trump administration and the Supreme Court ignore Catholic leadership from the Pope on down about the treatment of immigrants (fun fact—61% of those deported are also Catholic).

Stop in the Name of God by Charlie Kirk

A book I’m not going to read is Charlie Kirk’s Stop in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life. Apparently, it is a big bestseller. In his Book Club newsletter, Ron Charles discusses it, and I thought you might be interested in what he has to say. While he points out the lack of editing resulting in many errors such as having the exact same, word-for-word, sentence on consecutive pages (Donald Trump is a co-publisher, so …), he also gives Kirk credit for pointing out that people need down time as part of a spiritual practice.

[M]uch of this posthumously published book is committed to theological arguments, devotional reflections and practical advice on reclaiming the Sabbath to restore spiritual balance in a culture overstimulated by technology and consumerism. … But “Stop” is also a strange, uneven volume that sometimes gets lost in the wilderness.

His grasp of world history and religious history is spotty; his philosophical analysis displays the rigor of a late-night bull session after the pizza has grown cold. False choices, straw man arguments, cosmic leaps — it’s a Macy’s parade of inflated fallacies. When he speaks from the heart about the blessings of setting aside a day every week, he can be genuinely moving; when he tries to make a case for Intelligent Design, he should be moving on.

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Awake by Jen Hatmaker

Wikipedia describes Jen Hatmaker as an American author, speaker, blogger, and television presenter. Apparently she is very well known in the evangelical/conservative Christian world, which canceled her (literally—her publisher stopped publishing her books) when she came out as supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. According to Hatmaker herself, she was also canceled when she got a divorce in 2020 after discovering her husband’s affair. I guess that can happen twice.

I put Awake on hold at the library because I read something about it which gave me the idea that it discussed purity culture in the evangelical space. I don’t follow evangelical celebrities, so I didn’t know any of the above background on Hatmaker. This put me at a disadvantage in reading the memoir.

The first 100 pages make the assumption that the reader knows who Hatmaker is and what she’s done. She starts with waking from a dead sleep to hear her husband talking on the phone to his lover, saying he can’t quit her. So, a compelling beginning. But then she talks about being the wife of a pastor of a small church. When she then mentions calling her personal assistant to ask her to make some travel arrangements, I thought, ‘How does a pastor’s wife—of a very small church, that is—have the money for a personal assistant?’ And, yes, I had similar questions throughout those 100 pages.

Hatmaker gets through her trauma with some very good friends, ones who seem to have a lot of money and can offer her cool getaways. They are also handy. At one point, a group of them rebuild her porch and decorate it beautifully. While these women are generally in the Christian community, some of them are also pretty New Agey. They do things like sage her house to get rid of the bad vibes from the broken marriage.

While Hatmaker continues to be a believer, she decides to leave her church and hasn’t joined another. She does write a bit about the purity culture—she married as a teen who was still in college, partly so she could have sanctioned sex. Mostly she goes from that first moment when she awakens to her husband’s betrayal to the moment when she is awakened to her authority over herself and her responsibility for her own life. This well-worn trope is nice—the reader is glad for her—but this wasn’t the book I was looking for.

* On church, purity, and sexual abuse: I read that victims of the Catholic clergy in the New Orleans Archdiocese are to receive $230 million.

Advent

As I think of the theme of being awake, I realize I have sort of been sleeping through the season of Advent, which saddens me because I appreciate the sense of renewal it brings when I pay attention. My son introduced the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer to me, and I like how there is a prayer in there for just about everything. Last week, someone asked me to pray for their ill/injured dog. Yes, I found a good one specifically for that. For Advent, there are prayers for being in the presence of grace and love (for Christians, in the person of Jesus).

Rather than take myself to task, as I write this, I figure I have two weeks left of the traditional Advent season, and I don’t want it to be a Santa in camouflage holiday. So I’m tuning in to what can be meaningful for me. Here’s something I loved:

Who are We, Anyway? What are We Reading?