For years I put off reading the novels by Wendell Berry, a decision made despite recommendations from people who I consider trustworthy when it comes to recommending what is worth reading. Well, I have begun reading the volumes about the fictional village, Port William, located in Kentucky. I regret not having read them earlier, because I will certainly want to read them again and again. He introduces a cast of characters that I feel like I would know if they were to move to Lincoln. In fact, he has gone so far as to draw a map of Port William and he includes it in the volumes along with the “family tree” of its residents. When I survey the tree and see the birthdates and deathdates of characters I have fallen in love with, I feel as if I have lost some neighbors. This is quite remarkable, really, because they—the Coulters and the Catletts, for example, are fictional characters. But I miss one and then another as either the story comes to an end or their lives do.
I am currently reading a third volume in the series (I believe there are seven plus a volume of short stories), A World Lost, published in 1996. It is a story about a young boy, Andy Catlett, and the death of his Uncle Andrew Catlett, his namesake, his father’s brother. Uncle Andrew was one of a species, we are told. The uncle is murdered and in the pages we trace Andy’s pilgrimage in dealing with the death of his beloved uncle and friend. As Andy observes “I was his hand, his body, his buddy . . . I had wanted to be like him. It had not occurred to me to want to be like anybody else.” Andy experiences loss, sadness, and the mystery surrounding the man’s death. Indeed, no one tells the boy why his uncle was murdered, and the question follows Andy into adulthood.
The story is about the slippery nature of true, including the truth about each of us, about all of us.
There are two parts I cite for you. The first is one of Andy’s many reflections on his Uncle Andrew:
To him, I think the idea of consequence was always an afterthought. He did not expect consequences; he discovered them. When he could, he laughed them away. When they pressed in through his laughter, he shut his mouth and bore them. What he had done was his fate, and so he bore it.
Andy goes through life and collects what information he can about his uncle. As he collects he learns the limits of fact. Later in life, he reflects:
Perhaps it was thinking about him after his death, discovering how much I remembered and how little I knew, that I learned that all human stories in the world contain many lost or unwritten or unreadable or unwritable pages and that the truth about us, though it must exist, though it must lie all around us everyday, is mostly hidden from us, the birds’ nests in the woods.
I turned 61 on October 11. I read the above statements a few days after that day and marveled that at points in my life I have lived without thought of consequences of something I have said or did. More often than not, those were regretful times. Times I hope no one ever recalls and digs up. Much of my life is lost because so much was unwritten. (I have never been good at journaling, a popular practice among many today.) So much should remain unwritten and unread. And yet the truth about me as a husband, father, grandfather, teacher, and preacher lies all around me everyday. Much of the time, it is hidden from loved ones and friends and colleagues. Much of it is hidden from me. So I begin this sixty-first year relying on God’s grace more than ever. It is a wonderful, marvelous grace that saves, sustains, and continues to surprise.
