Dear Jonathan Martin,
I met you last summer, in Charlotte, at a book signing. I brought with me my husband and my copy of Prototype, so I could show you all the ways I talked back to you as I read because I felt so energized by someone who valued the words of Annie Dillard and Flannery O’Conner along with the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen and U2. I called you one of “my people,” so you signed my copy of How to Survive a Shipwreck with “So thankful to meet two of ‘my people.'” I left feeling inspired, and I couldn’t wait to read Shipwreck. Nearly a year later, I have finally finished Shipwreck (I am a high school teacher who spends a ridiculous amount of time reading student essays, plus I am a scattered reader who reads a few pages at a time while keeping about 7 books going at once) but upon completion of the book, I have to talk to you again. I marked up the pages relentlessly, just as I showed you I had done Prototype. I can’t wait until a chance meeting at a book store again to tell you some of my thoughts as I read Shipwreck. I hope you don’t mind my posting this one-sided conversation on my blog, and I would love to hear your response.
First, as a high school English teacher, I love that you make reference to Moby Dick, and as a lover of the American Dark Romantics, I enjoyed hearing your ideas of the white whale as a metaphor for our deepest fears and monsters inside us. I definitely needed to hear that I need to stop trying to kill those beasts which rage inside of me and which I try to hide regularly behind the expected polite smile of a southern woman who is a high school teacher in a small Southern Baptist town. Of course, even typing this, my mind trails to the Eagles (“They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beasts”) which then leads my mind to Lord of the Flies – so many ways to go with this metaphor, and that leaves me with so many new thoughts about the darkness inside of us. Thank you!
May I tell you about my thoughts on how your descriptions line up with The Scarlet Letter? I have no idea if you have contemplated the connection between the descriptions in Shipwreck and the two tortured former lovers in Hawthorne’s novel, and I don’t know if you love the book like I do, but let me start by saying that every year I teach Hawthorne’s novel, I find more and more relevance to today’s world. I adore Hawthorne, and Hester means so much to me as a teacher, as a follower of Christ, and as a feminist. If you read my blog entry before this one, you will see my latest musings on this relevance. Regarding you book, though, first let me start with the townspeople and the established church in the novel. Here, you describe them perfectly when you say, “When we’re too proud to be on our backs – in a manger or on a cross – we can be as honest as we know how to be, but the world we see is still founded on lies…. It is blasphemy to take the posture of the high place from which we look down at everyone else, at the world we see only as below us” (192). Hawthorne shows us this physically when the ministers stand on the balcony during Hester’s interrogation, even above Hester as she stands on the scaffold, which is above the heads of the people. The Puritan pulpit stands high above the people’s hard wooden seats, and their world is a world of lies and hypocrisy. The blaspheme every time they mistreat Hester and Pearl while they deny and hide their own sins.
You also portray the town of Boston and Hester’s opening scene of shame at the scaffold when you explain, “This is what we do when we do not understand someone else’s story. Their story disrupts our sense of order, so we have no choice but to accuse and blame them. Accusation has no place in any sort of authentic spirituality. Accusation is always an attempt to expel a threat by turning another human being into a monster” (124). They try to turn Hester into a monster because her choices disrupt their merit/demerit idea of Christianity, as you have described. The beautiful part of the story is that Hester doesn’t run from being a monster, but embraces it, and therein finds salvation. But I will get to her last.
Next, let’s look at Dimmesdale, the minister who wants to do God’s will but works in vain because he spends all his mental efforts on trying to kill the guilt and desire he has within himself. I see Dimmesdale’s struggles clearly when you say, “the mysteries we attempt to cage are the ones most likely to eat us” (120). Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is the truth of his sin being revealed and thereby costing him not only his soul, which he feels is damned anyway, but also the souls of the people in his congregation. He worries about the ones he will lead astray, which reminds me so much of your story of serving the Lord out of fear and worrying that you “would be responsible for an entire village going to hell!” (141). He goes about his duties hollow, living a life of such lies that he begins to whip himself and starve himself just so he can feel again, be true to himself at some private moments in his life. He learns that he cannot “wage a quiet war against Leviathan. That is inevitably going to be an unwinnable war against our very selves – a war that will cost us our health, our sanity, our well-being. It is a life of quiet desperation” (132). Bonus! Thoreau allusion!! I see Dimmesdale again when you quote Rollo May. Dimmesdale follows through the motions of living because he has not “‘frankly confront[ed] the terrifying fact that he could wipe out his existence but chooses not to'” (146). Dimmesdale makes no decisions, continues to grow weaker and weaker, and opens himself unknowingly to the evil machinations of Chillingworth, and since Dimmesdale is so self-focused on trying to kill the monster inside him, he can’t see the monster lurking right beside him. He is “not able to develop [his] own ethical awareness and strength” (146). Hester, in chapter 17, urges him as they sit in the forest: “Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame.” He can’t even develop his own thoughts, much less choose to live. As you have so profoundly explained, Dimmesdale has “continue[d] to live a life out of duty and obligation, keeping the rules only so that others will tell [him he is] good,” and he “end[s] up with contempt for [himself]. Living dependent on the approval of others means we never develop our own sense of dignity and self-esteem, really, our own sense of self” (146-7). I can’t begin to tell you how much these words freed me, though, too. I tell myself over and over again that I have quit depending on the approval and support of others. Your words reinforced that notion for me, and I appreciate your insight.
Now, on to Hester, our hero. Hester has experienced a shipwreck. In fact, Hawthorne tells us in chapter 18 that, “Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” She has endured more than many of us could have, but she doesn’t run from the monsters; no, instead she confronts her new life with dignity and grace I can’t imagine that I would be able to find. In chapter 5, we see that as she uses her money to make clothes for the poor, “The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succor them.” If she goes to church, the preachers use her as an example in the sermon; kids stare at her and wealthy women make derogatory comments right in front of her. Yet, she continues to seek out those in need and do for them. In chapter 13, Hawthorne shows us, “In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble.” Here, we see how God takes the emblem of her shame (her shipwreck) and turns it into something powerful and meaningful: “Such helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength.” Hester is all I could think about when you say “the first sign of the divine presence is not order, but confusion” (160). Through confusion and “nothing but disorder and upheaval, is the place of new life, the place of creation” (161) for Hester. God is “not scandalized, shocked, or frightened” (130) by shipwrecks in the lives of Hester and Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, but only Hester survives and thrives after the shipwreck because she doesn’t try to kill the beast inside her or run from it. Instead, she learns from it and is no longer blind, and as you say so well, “the gift of sight is a disruption to the powers that be” (184). Hester is a testimony to your words that “those who have been on the bottom of social structures are able to see themselves differently through the dignity of grace,” and she clearly can “see through the hollow machinations of those in power” (184). Hester empowers me. I watch how she allows God to take her emblem of shame and turn it into a badge of accomplishment and power, and I know that God can turn the monster inside of me into something worthwhile, too. I hope that I can be like Hester and like you, and that I can learn from the shipwrecks in my life (and they are there!) that “the world can only be truly seen from the underside. That is where Jesus makes his miracles” (192).
If you will indulge me for one more paragraph, I would like to tell you a personal story now. My husband and I are friends and colleagues of a young man who made some really unhealthy choices in his life recently. These choices have had seemingly irreparable consequences on his life, his position in our society, and his prospects for the future. People, of course, are talking about him and speculating about him. My husband and I have talked. In fact, we have had this same talk before about another friend of ours who made similar choices a few years ago. While the town ostracizes both of these men, my husband, who has a true heart for Christ, suffers with them. “I can’t leave him out there on his own. I know what people are saying,” he tells me, “but I can’t let him think he is suffering by himself. I am not saying what he did was right, but I need to let him know that I am his friend no matter what.” He contemplates the reality that some may look at him differently because he chooses to stay friends with the person who has created the scandal, but I support him, of course, because I pray that if I ever find myself alone in the middle of a scandal that I would have someone support me, too. When I finished Shipwreck last week, I read him this excerpt about Job: “But Job’s friends are precisely the kind of friends we often are if we have not suffered – they are more interested in explaining Job’s plight to him than sitting with him init. They are incapable of the compassion that would demand them to suffer with Job, to suffer alongside him” (123). Thank you for these words! They reassured him and me that we are called to suffer alongside our friends, to help them endure the shipwreck. If the shipwrecks in our lives are to have meaning and purpose, then we have to remember what the shipwreck felt like so that we can sit with others who are experiencing their shipwreck right now. Reading over this paragraph, I fear that I am sounding pious, but I don’t mean to. I just wanted you to know that your words reminded us that we don’t want to be like Job’s friends; we want to the friends who endure the shipwrecks together.
Jonathan, I appreciate your words more than I can explain. The ring true to me, and they ring true with my understanding of my precious Jesus. Thank you!
I met you last summer, in Charlotte, at a book signing. I brought with me my husband and my copy of Prototype, so I could show you all the ways I talked back to you as I read because I felt so energized by someone who valued the words of Annie Dillard and Flannery O’Conner along with the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen and U2. I called you one of “my people,” so you signed my copy of How to Survive a Shipwreck with “So thankful to meet two of ‘my people.'” I left feeling inspired, and I couldn’t wait to read Shipwreck. Nearly a year later, I have finally finished Shipwreck (I am a high school teacher who spends a ridiculous amount of time reading student essays, plus I am a scattered reader who reads a few pages at a time while keeping about 7 books going at once) but upon completion of the book, I have to talk to you again. I marked up the pages relentlessly, just as I showed you I had done Prototype. I can’t wait until a chance meeting at a book store again to tell you some of my thoughts as I read Shipwreck. I hope you don’t mind my posting this one-sided conversation on my blog, and I would love to hear your response.
First, as a high school English teacher, I love that you make reference to Moby Dick, and as a lover of the American Dark Romantics, I enjoyed hearing your ideas of the white whale as a metaphor for our deepest fears and monsters inside us. I definitely needed to hear that I need to stop trying to kill those beasts which rage inside of me and which I try to hide regularly behind the expected polite smile of a southern woman who is a high school teacher in a small Southern Baptist town. Of course, even typing this, my mind trails to the Eagles (“They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beasts”) which then leads my mind to Lord of the Flies – so many ways to go with this metaphor, and that leaves me with so many new thoughts about the darkness inside of us. Thank you!
May I tell you about my thoughts on how your descriptions line up with The Scarlet Letter? I have no idea if you have contemplated the connection between the descriptions in Shipwreck and the two tortured former lovers in Hawthorne’s novel, and I don’t know if you love the book like I do, but let me start by saying that every year I teach Hawthorne’s novel, I find more and more relevance to today’s world. I adore Hawthorne, and Hester means so much to me as a teacher, as a follower of Christ, and as a feminist. If you read my blog entry before this one, you will see my latest musings on this relevance. Regarding you book, though, first let me start with the townspeople and the established church in the novel. Here, you describe them perfectly when you say, “When we’re too proud to be on our backs – in a manger or on a cross – we can be as honest as we know how to be, but the world we see is still founded on lies…. It is blasphemy to take the posture of the high place from which we look down at everyone else, at the world we see only as below us” (192). Hawthorne shows us this physically when the ministers stand on the balcony during Hester’s interrogation, even above Hester as she stands on the scaffold, which is above the heads of the people. The Puritan pulpit stands high above the people’s hard wooden seats, and their world is a world of lies and hypocrisy. The blaspheme every time they mistreat Hester and Pearl while they deny and hide their own sins.
You also portray the town of Boston and Hester’s opening scene of shame at the scaffold when you explain, “This is what we do when we do not understand someone else’s story. Their story disrupts our sense of order, so we have no choice but to accuse and blame them. Accusation has no place in any sort of authentic spirituality. Accusation is always an attempt to expel a threat by turning another human being into a monster” (124). They try to turn Hester into a monster because her choices disrupt their merit/demerit idea of Christianity, as you have described. The beautiful part of the story is that Hester doesn’t run from being a monster, but embraces it, and therein finds salvation. But I will get to her last.
Next, let’s look at Dimmesdale, the minister who wants to do God’s will but works in vain because he spends all his mental efforts on trying to kill the guilt and desire he has within himself. I see Dimmesdale’s struggles clearly when you say, “the mysteries we attempt to cage are the ones most likely to eat us” (120). Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is the truth of his sin being revealed and thereby costing him not only his soul, which he feels is damned anyway, but also the souls of the people in his congregation. He worries about the ones he will lead astray, which reminds me so much of your story of serving the Lord out of fear and worrying that you “would be responsible for an entire village going to hell!” (141). He goes about his duties hollow, living a life of such lies that he begins to whip himself and starve himself just so he can feel again, be true to himself at some private moments in his life. He learns that he cannot “wage a quiet war against Leviathan. That is inevitably going to be an unwinnable war against our very selves – a war that will cost us our health, our sanity, our well-being. It is a life of quiet desperation” (132). Bonus! Thoreau allusion!! I see Dimmesdale again when you quote Rollo May. Dimmesdale follows through the motions of living because he has not “‘frankly confront[ed] the terrifying fact that he could wipe out his existence but chooses not to'” (146). Dimmesdale makes no decisions, continues to grow weaker and weaker, and opens himself unknowingly to the evil machinations of Chillingworth, and since Dimmesdale is so self-focused on trying to kill the monster inside him, he can’t see the monster lurking right beside him. He is “not able to develop [his] own ethical awareness and strength” (146). Hester, in chapter 17, urges him as they sit in the forest: “Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame.” He can’t even develop his own thoughts, much less choose to live. As you have so profoundly explained, Dimmesdale has “continue[d] to live a life out of duty and obligation, keeping the rules only so that others will tell [him he is] good,” and he “end[s] up with contempt for [himself]. Living dependent on the approval of others means we never develop our own sense of dignity and self-esteem, really, our own sense of self” (146-7). I can’t begin to tell you how much these words freed me, though, too. I tell myself over and over again that I have quit depending on the approval and support of others. Your words reinforced that notion for me, and I appreciate your insight.
Now, on to Hester, our hero. Hester has experienced a shipwreck. In fact, Hawthorne tells us in chapter 18 that, “Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” She has endured more than many of us could have, but she doesn’t run from the monsters; no, instead she confronts her new life with dignity and grace I can’t imagine that I would be able to find. In chapter 5, we see that as she uses her money to make clothes for the poor, “The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succor them.” If she goes to church, the preachers use her as an example in the sermon; kids stare at her and wealthy women make derogatory comments right in front of her. Yet, she continues to seek out those in need and do for them. In chapter 13, Hawthorne shows us, “In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble.” Here, we see how God takes the emblem of her shame (her shipwreck) and turns it into something powerful and meaningful: “Such helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength.” Hester is all I could think about when you say “the first sign of the divine presence is not order, but confusion” (160). Through confusion and “nothing but disorder and upheaval, is the place of new life, the place of creation” (161) for Hester. God is “not scandalized, shocked, or frightened” (130) by shipwrecks in the lives of Hester and Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, but only Hester survives and thrives after the shipwreck because she doesn’t try to kill the beast inside her or run from it. Instead, she learns from it and is no longer blind, and as you say so well, “the gift of sight is a disruption to the powers that be” (184). Hester is a testimony to your words that “those who have been on the bottom of social structures are able to see themselves differently through the dignity of grace,” and she clearly can “see through the hollow machinations of those in power” (184). Hester empowers me. I watch how she allows God to take her emblem of shame and turn it into a badge of accomplishment and power, and I know that God can turn the monster inside of me into something worthwhile, too. I hope that I can be like Hester and like you, and that I can learn from the shipwrecks in my life (and they are there!) that “the world can only be truly seen from the underside. That is where Jesus makes his miracles” (192).
If you will indulge me for one more paragraph, I would like to tell you a personal story now. My husband and I are friends and colleagues of a young man who made some really unhealthy choices in his life recently. These choices have had seemingly irreparable consequences on his life, his position in our society, and his prospects for the future. People, of course, are talking about him and speculating about him. My husband and I have talked. In fact, we have had this same talk before about another friend of ours who made similar choices a few years ago. While the town ostracizes both of these men, my husband, who has a true heart for Christ, suffers with them. “I can’t leave him out there on his own. I know what people are saying,” he tells me, “but I can’t let him think he is suffering by himself. I am not saying what he did was right, but I need to let him know that I am his friend no matter what.” He contemplates the reality that some may look at him differently because he chooses to stay friends with the person who has created the scandal, but I support him, of course, because I pray that if I ever find myself alone in the middle of a scandal that I would have someone support me, too. When I finished Shipwreck last week, I read him this excerpt about Job: “But Job’s friends are precisely the kind of friends we often are if we have not suffered – they are more interested in explaining Job’s plight to him than sitting with him init. They are incapable of the compassion that would demand them to suffer with Job, to suffer alongside him” (123). Thank you for these words! They reassured him and me that we are called to suffer alongside our friends, to help them endure the shipwreck. If the shipwrecks in our lives are to have meaning and purpose, then we have to remember what the shipwreck felt like so that we can sit with others who are experiencing their shipwreck right now. Reading over this paragraph, I fear that I am sounding pious, but I don’t mean to. I just wanted you to know that your words reminded us that we don’t want to be like Job’s friends; we want to the friends who endure the shipwrecks together.
Jonathan, I appreciate your words more than I can explain. The ring true to me, and they ring true with my understanding of my precious Jesus. Thank you!
Kristie Camp 