Father Dwight Longenecker was kind enough to
review God
through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery at the Imaginative Conservative
website. You can read Father Dwight's review below or at his website, here
Escaping from Myself
by Dwight Longenecker
Books should take you
outside yourself. They should introduce you to new people, new worlds, new
thoughts and new ideas. They should give you new ways of seeing and new ways of
being.
Unfortunately, my life has too often been
filled with books that do no such thing. I am sent two or three books a week to
read and review. Because I have a blog authors and publishers seem to think
that I have nothing else to do but read their books and write wonderful reviews.
It is assumed that the blogger must be a full time book promotion and publicity
machine—and all completely free of charge!
Unfortunately, with the advent of print on
demand, the price of producing books has fallen. The number of books has
therefore shot upward, at the same time the number of serious readers has
plummeted. Alas, most of the books therefore are disposable and forgettable.
What is that tart comment? “Everyone has a book
inside them, and for most people that is where it should stay…”
Consequently, I have developed a cunning plan
to deal with the steady stream of books that wash up on my desk. If the cover
is interesting I open the book. If the table of contents is interesting I start
to read the book. If the second paragraph still holds my interest I read on. I
stop reading the book when I am no longer interested.
I’m afraid I rarely get past the first chapter.
I do not blame the author. Some of the books are worthy and well written but
simply not for me. Then there is my own increasingly short attention span and
even shorter patience.
Therefore, if a book does get me…if I finish
the darn thing it finally gets a review. This
summer two books got me because they took me outside myself. I should
explain that my world is what you might expect. It is the rather conventional
and conservative world of a Catholic priest and writer. My conversations, my
books, my viewing and my life, like most people’s, usually circle within my
little world.
But God Through Binoculars - A Hitchhiker at
a Monastery caught my attention. First it was the author’s name. Is Danusha
Goska male or female? What is this foreign sounding name? I am guessing
Russian, Rumanian, Ukranian or something thereabouts. I view the cover.
Monastery is good and hitchhiker is good. In the summer of 1987 I hitch hiked
to Jerusalem from England staying in monasteries all along the route so I was
curious.
Danusha, it turns out is a feisty Polish
American woman, and a devout Catholic. Down on her luck, she decided to
hitchhike from New Jersey to a monastery in Virginia to seek God’s guidance.
Her book is the account of that journey. Part
travel book, spiritual journal, bird watcher’s guide, conversion story and
delightfully eccentric grumble, God Through Binoculars took me outside
myself on a curiously unpredictable adventure.
The author tells how she was brought up in an
impoverished, devout but dysfunctional Catholic family and how she overcame all
odds to pursue a career in academia. With
detours to discuss the sex life of hyenas, the birds of North America and the
disappointments of her experience of the Catholic Church, this is one
hilarious, passionate, weird and wonderful tale.
Danusha is a person
with no guile. She doesn’t pull any punches and has no time for the artificial,
the phony and the fake. She is a non conformist and rages against the expected
compromises of academia, the hypocrisy of churchmen and the betrayal of friends.
One of the highlights
for me was her dissection of Thomas Merton. Far from paying homage to the
famous monk, she pokes at Merton’s romanticized monasticism, observing his
hypocrisy and the phony liberal Catholicism that his fake mysticism spawned.
I’ve felt that way about Merton for some time, so it was refreshing to find a
kindred spirit—someone willing to pop the Merton balloon.
Danusha is also
refreshingly frank about sex. She discusses some of her love affairs with an
explicitness that may make some readers blush. She is equally blunt about her
love-hate relationship with the Catholic Church. She clearly loves God and
loves her faith, but is impatient with clerical nincompoops, monastic frauds,
incompetent establishment goons and all the pompous rigamarole.
God Through Binoculars is a smart, funny, refreshing and quirky read. It’s the
best irreverently reverent religious book I’ve read this year.
Speaking of monasteries, Quarr Abbey on the
Isle of Wight in England is one of my favorite places on earth. We were
received into the Catholic Church there and I was there to research a book for
a week last summer. While there, and old friend, Dom Luke Bell handed me a book
to read and review. Love’s Many Names is a collection of poetry by Sam
Davidson.
Davidson studied theology and philosophy at
Edinburgh University and film studies at Exeter. He worked with Kurdish
refugees and war veterans in transit camps in Europe and traveled widely in
Europe. His poems reflect his travels and faith, and like Danusha, he took me
out of myself because his approach to the faith is so vivid, personal,
passionate and unconventional. Like Danusha he writes not only from the heart,
but from the guts and from the groin.
These are not religious poems per se, but
they are deeply mystical. Like all good poets and authentic mystics, Davidson
wrings meaning out of his life. He sees with sacramental eyes and perceives the
passion within his experience. Here a poem describes with painful objectivity
the passion and despair of the homeless. There a poem subtly melds his love for
a woman with the passion of Christ. Here he rages with the refugee, there he
touches the hem of nature’s beauty with a masculine tenderness.
Davidson’s verse is sometimes free but often
formal, with the subtle formality of the under appreciated Movement poets—that
group of English post war poets who retained classical forms while integrating
natural speech rhythms and idioms. When he is writing formally Davidsom echoes
the style of Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn, Donald Davie and Elizabeth Jennings.
Like Jennings, Davidson’s poems hover around
the subject of Catholic faith without ever being on the nose, saccharine or
sentimental. The Christian faith is never obvious here. Instead it runs like
life blood through the images, cadences and schemes of the poetry.
Like Danusha, Davidson writes simply and
without guile. Both authors do not seem to care whether they please anyone.
They are being honest and they write truth from the heart.
Did I say these books took me out of myself?
They did, but only to open me more deeply to remember a man I sued to be. I rediscovered that young man who hitchhiked
to Jerusalem over thirty years ago, flirting with the call of the monastery. I
got back in touch with the unconventional young man who fled America on a crazy
notion of being a poet, like George Herbert in an English country vicarage.
Both books are a refreshing and heart inspiring
read and for once I was glad for the unsolicited books that end up on my desk.
Consequently I have decided to grumble a little less and view each new book as
a possible fresh adventure and perhaps another pilgrimage outside myself.
Love’s Many Names is published by
Angelico Press. God Through Binoculars by Shanti Arts Publishing.
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