The Great January Round-Up: Books, Beers and Bands
“Either death like a shadow or love like a light
Every step it must follow then stay back and fight
For what you laid down or stood for in your life’s great breath
We sigh out, but we never die”
Summertime in Australia is for good books, craft beer, swimming, naps and music. See also; bushfires, starving livestock, devastation of ecosystems, celebration of invasion day and horrific wholesale consumption of cheap plastic rubbish over Christmas.
As summer is drawing to a close and my kids are getting ready to go back to school, I thought I would pop a post up in honour of the things that brought me joy over this last couple months. It was a gruesome summer for us in Australia, bushfires devoured our land, our people, our wildlife, ecosystems and our hearts. There was a similar dynamic playing out in my private world, so it was at times, very dark. There were also times of beauty, joy, connection and celebration in the midst of all of this, and it made me think that this is just sometimes how it is; the sublime, the ridiculous and the unspeakable in an energetic dance. In times of distress; both personal and collective, I vacillate wildly between deeply immersing myself in the pain of the moment, and numbing and escaping for psychological relief. With that being said, I’m going to lean into what was beautiful for the purposes of this post.
One of the things I have been intentionally cultivating is spacious, joyful and quiet times with soul-friends and with my two boys. This has been a brilliant part of the summer, and I have a kaleidoscope of gorgeous moments in my minds eye now that I return to as evidence that I have finally learned how to slow down, rest my type-A brain, be still and enjoy the moment. One of my favourites was the night my two boys and I dragged out the tiny two-seater lounge from the annex of the caravan we had rented in Gracetown, and stuck it in the middle of a wide open space of bush. We snuggled underneath my quilt together, me like a mother hen with one chick tucked under each wing. We were all in our pjs with our teeth brushed ready for sleep, but the night sky was calling. It was perfectly still, the sky a shimmering perfect dome open before us. The sun was still going down in the west, sending off its last golden glow as it descended into the Indian Ocean. The cockatoos were still winging their way to their roost. Bats were starting to flutter. Crickets were beginning their evening lullaby.
First came Venus. Then one by one, the other stars appeared. We watched them come, in glorious millions at a time.
The new moon was still hiding, and so the night sky was at its most luminescent. We stayed, transfixed until it was full dark, well after bedtime had come and gone. Oh, the thrill for two small boys staying up late to stargaze tucked into mama.
Sometimes it saddens me that I’m raising my kids in the city. It’s not what I wanted. I wanted country life for them. I wanted night skies with no noise and light pollution after dark. I wanted wilderness and quiet and adventure and risk and learning the patterns of nature. I hoped in that moment that the deposit of beauty from that starry night sky would be enough to hold their souls against suburban life and the gruelling term to come.
“Hello to the powerful truth the body tells us.”
There was the night sky, the hammocks, the sleep-ins, the coffees and good food. And then there were the books.
I have been unable to digest fiction of late, I think having raised myself on Greek, Norse and Roman mythology, immersed myself fully into the worlds of Narnia, Hobbiton, Middle Earth, Hogwarts and a whole host of other beautiful imaginary landscapes, I am now hungry for the writing from those who have learned to map archetypes and locate stories as old as time into their own context. I think this is why I’ve always been drawn to mystics, shit-stirrers and prophets. The authors I love the most are all three. Several others have written more comprehensively than I could here about O’Tuama’s “In the Shelter”, so I won’t go into it here. Except to say that a dear friend told me to read this a long time ago and I finally got around to it. And I’m so glad I did. His words are still resonating around and around in my heart and I haven’t quite finished digesting them, though I finished this book on Christmas Eve. But there is something in his relentless embodiment of his own faith which I found compelling and beautiful in a way that left my heart feeling cracked open and exposed; but also met and seen.
Estes and Moore have been longtime companions of mine, though I find their work so meaty that I usually can only digest a page or two at a time. This work of Estes’ is all about the sacred feminine archetype of Mary, which is an idea that has long fascinated me. I’m still reading “Untie the Strong Woman” and I probably will be for some time. I read Rumi the way I read Proverbs, in bite size chunks, dipping in and out and for some of the same reasons. Rumi’s ancient knowing and prophetic soul nourishes me in ways that I have not yet really wrapped my head around. The Cloud of Unknowing has been like a guidebook over the last couple months, as I have traversed into spiritual waters that I didn’t even know existed. As I have moved out beyond the boundaries of my own comfort and understanding, I have felt a kinship with the anonymous author of this classic mystical text, who encourages me to keep sending ‘longing darts of love’ at the cloud that separates me from the Divine, and that in my not-knowing and not-seeing and not-perceiving, I am being met and known and seen.
It has been Taylor who has been my cosmic fairy god-mother this summer reminding me of something I used to teach about; Fowler’s stages of faith. This quote in particular grabbed me:
“At the fifth stage…people know the ‘sacrament of defeat.’ They live with the consequences of choices they cannot unchoose. They have been permanently shaped by commitments they cannot unmake. Yet there is still a lot of undoing at this stage, as people let go of many of the certainties about themselves and the world that they earlier worked so hard to put in place. The boundaries of the tribe no longer hold. Strangers and strange truths are no longer frightening but compelling. Paradoxical truths are the most compelling of all. People at this stage are ready to spend and to be spent, emptying their pockets in one last-ditch effort to make meaning.”
Taylor’s ‘Learning to Walk in the Dark’ was a beautiful invitation out of what she calls ‘solar Christianity’ and into a ‘lunar Christianity’ where we learn to embrace what darkness can teach us, and to unbundle the gift of darkness with the unhelpful associations we have particularly in the west, with darkness signifying the absence of God. She reminds us in this book that darkness is where we sleep, dream, are restored, can see things with our inner eye that cannot be perceived in any other way. She put language and nuance around things I have long suspected, and hoped were true, but never knew how to express. Anyone who retires from the clergy to move to the country to learn to live more in step with nature is already someone I am fascinated to know more about. This book ministered to my soul in ways that I didn’t even know I needed.
To round off the three “B’s” of my joy-factory this summer, books, beers and bands, we now turn to some of the brew-sampling I have been doing of late. Around this time last year, I was introduced to the joy of Biggie Juice.
I’m not gonna lie, it has been, and will continue to be my one and only.
The love to end all loves.
The one beer for whom my soul will always long.
But, and this (as my friend Chris likes to say) is a powerful truth; it can be hard to come by. And sometimes I find myself wandering around aimlessly in my truck echoing the laments of the Psalmist and mumbling things like ‘in a dry and sun-scorched land where there is no Biggie Juice, my soul grows faint.’ Because I am not above entertaining myself with some mild heretical appropriation of scripture.
“In an effort to distract myself from the absence of Biggie Juice, I have tried other beers. Like a locally made Pineapple IPA on tap this summer at most places in the South West of WA, Cheeky Monkey Brewery’s Session Ale, which tasted like stale wetsuits and disappointment, and even (and this makes me feel old, so I don’t like to admit it) the “Weetbix of Beers,” Coopers. Before I discovered Biggie Juice, there was another fruity craft beer I loved once. I discovered it at Whole Foods in Dallas this time last year during a conference, but it was pink, and it made me feel like a stereotype. So after I smuggled it into the theology conference I was at in a take-away coffee cup I parted ways with it and haven’t really thought about it since. It was good though, now that confession time is here. It was really, really good; grapefruity with a hint of juniper. ”
It’s against my religion to drink beer in fancy glasses like this. Picture for illustration purposes only.
What I have found, because God is merciful and just, is that even when Biggie Juice can’t be found, usually Little Dove can be. Or Single Fin. Both passable and enjoyable in their own way. Buying Little Dove always makes me low-key amused, because they only sell it in four packs. I hear a little narrative from the good folks at the brewery that goes like this:
“Look guys, this stuff is powerful. It’s unleaded. It’s STRONGER THAN NORMAL BEER. And frankly, we don’t trust you to read the label and understand that. So our HR department will only let us sell it to you in four packs. We hope you understand. Thanks guys. Enjoy. You’re the best.”
Finally, bands. Halfway through last year I was listening to a lot of William Fitzsimmons. His lyrical writing and get-you-in-the-guts melodies with just the right amount of banjo doing its thing was exactly what was needed at the time. Then one day, I was on a long drive and the Spotify playlist I had made featuring quite a lot of William Fitzsimmons came to an end, so Spotify did what Spotify will do if you let it, and started mapping my song choices and throwing up new tunes for me to digest. It was like, “look, we know you are really attached to this playlist right now, but you know what? It’s time to step away and try something new. We will help you. Just sit there and keep listening and look, if you don’t like it, you can always aggressively stab that big button on your stereo and we will go away. We promise.”
And in that moment, a beautiful thing happened; I discovered Canyon City. I used one of his quotes to open this post because I have loved him ever since that moment I let Spotify take the wheel, and here I am closing with him too; because, symmetry. Canyon City takes fleeting impressions of beautiful memories of time, places, snatches of conversation, people, un-nameable emotions, and puts them in his songs like magic. I have listened to all of his albums over and over again in the last couple months and have loved his attention to nuance, his poetry, his construction of dynamics.
What about you? What have you been listening to, enjoying, drinking, pondering?