Required Reading {Engaging Culture}

As a child, I lived much of the time in the imagined 19th century of my mind, playing dress-up and reading hundreds of girl's novels about the olden days. Laura Ingalls and Mandie were among my best friends. 

It seemed more exciting, more romantic, more adventurous than my own farm childhood.

I often wished I had been born in another time and place.

~

At a recent academic conference, I was chatting with an acquaintance from another university, catching up on our private and professional lives. We discussed her past research in Canadian literature, and a novel both of us had read. She raved about this novel, while I expressed that although it was a page-turner I had read within the space of 24 hours, years ago in a tent while camping in Austria, I had found some scenes in the novel extremely disturbing. 

"Am I just overly sensitive when it comes to protecting children and abuse?" I wondered. The novel gave a stark and realistic portrayal of a Maritime community, a certain kind of life in a specific time and place. 

Knowing each other to both be believing Christians, we cautiously broached the subject of what is acceptable for a Jesus-follower to read, to research, to teach. 

Is there merit in fiction which portrays evil? In filling one's mind with images, stories which disturb, even disgust?

This is a topic I have wrestled with for a few years. On the one hand, I believe each reader must be discerning about what does them good and may cause them to have thoughts which are negative, unhelpful, even sinful. The Bible teaches us to "gird up the loins of our minds." To think about, to dwell on, that which is honourable, pure, just, lovely, excellent, commendable, praiseworthy. 

But perhaps there is a difference between reading, and dwelling on. 

I do not believe Christians should confine their reading to the sterilized "Christian fiction" (often taking place in a romanticized 19th century or among the Amish) of the Christian bookstore. This kind of reading seldom portrays realistic, present-day characters, with real questions and problems, real sin, real struggle, and real redemption. It rarely helps you to better understand your neighbour who is facing a divorce, your brother-in-law's alcoholism, your high-school aged son who feels lost and isolated, hiding a porn addiction, the bi-polar colleague with erratic behaviour, nor the homeless man you pass everyday in the street feeling guilty about. Rather, "Christian fiction" provides escapism from the realities of life in the here and now, the place God has pulled me out of eternity to live in. 

Escapism does not honour a God who determined the exact times and places where we should live.

~ 

As I've mentioned before, I found great encouragement in knowing that the prophet Daniel did a Bachelor's in literature. He was appointed to a place of influence in a foreign Kingdom after having studied the language and literature of the Chaldeans for three years.

Jesus hung out with people of all walks of life, from the despised prostitute to the hated rich tax collector, from working-class fishermen to the religious leaders of the day. He engaged with his culture, ate and drank and went to parties, and never shied away from a controversy. He cared about people. Messed up, broken, sinful people like us. He was not oblivious to the world going on around him, to the needs and struggles. He was not hiding in his holiness.

~

Literature - short stories, novels, poetry - is an amazing tool for understanding and engaging the culture we live in. Classic works of a nation's fiction, as well as current bestsellers, should be required reading for anyone hoping to impact that culture. Fiction gives us a window into understanding peoples' motivations, their world view, the history and politics which impact their way of reasoning, behaving, deciding, believing.

There will be things which disturb. You probably won't like all of the characters and wish you were like them, or even want to cheer for them. 

Fiction gives us eyes to see, ears to hear. It enables us to go where perhaps our own feet never will, to ask questions we are too embarrassed to speak out, to understand and give a frame of reference for starting a conversation.

Here. 

In the real world, with our real, broken, messy colleagues, family, neighbours, ourselves.

Now.

For such a time as this.

In Memorium: My Austrian Spiritual Father

We had slept in the parked car since about 3 a.m. I got our almost 3 year old son out of his car seat and let him snuggle on my lap so that I would have enough room behind me to recline my seat. My husband held our daughter in his arms to give her a break from her car seat, although he was unable to sleep sitting up in our tightly packed rental car. We'd decided to undertake the 8 hour drive from my parents' place in southwestern Ontario, Canada, to Montreal overnight so our kids would sleep through it, but stopped in the parking lot of an OnRoute rest stop to (try to) sleep for a few hours. At 6 we went inside for some breakfast, to freshen up and to enjoy the free WiFi. After getting our kids settled with juice and yogurt, my husband checked his phone. I was laughing at my son's excited antics when my husband nudged me, "Look at this." His voice broke.

A friend back home in Germany had alerted us to the sudden announcement on Tauernhof's Facebook page. Hans Peter Royer, the director of Tauernhof, an mountain retreat centre and Torchbearer's Bible School in Austria, had died suddenly in a tragic paragliding accident.

a snapshot of Hans Peter from the summer of 2007
when my husband & I returned to work as guides

We were shocked. He was only 52. He was an experienced mountain guide, often rescuing others. For a few moments I wondered if it had been some kind of sick joke, how could he have passed away in the same manner as his predecessor? My heart broke for his family, knowing his daughter Lisa, with whom I had hiked when she was 8 years old, had celebrated her wedding only a few weeks before.

We held it together so our kids would not notice our sadness. Back on the road, when they were sleeping again, we shed tears and reminisced about our times at Tauernhof, where we met at Fall School in 2004, and how Hans Peter had impacted the narrative of our lives.


I first went to Tauernhof in 2002 for a mountaineering program called Upward Bound. Those six weeks truly changed my life. Never had I understood or experienced the sweetness and beauty of Christian community like that before. We were often pushed to our physical limits, hiking with heavy packs for up to a week without having a shower, sleeping in a cave 1200 m under the Dachstein mountain in utter darkness at 0 degrees. We were challenged emotionally, putting up with teammates from all over the world of various ages, abilities and personalities, with whom we had to live, cook, and sleep in tents or mountain huts (note the aforementioned lack of showering). We were forced to work together to cross glaciers, literally shouldering each others' burdens when injuries or weakness brought some teammates to their breaking point. I remember fondly the morning we woke up to find our leaders had abandoned us in the night, and we were left to make our own way down the mountain, and then run a 12 km jaunt back to a warm shower and a real bed. My time at Tauernhof taught me that, by God's grace, I am capable of loving other people, even those whom at first impression I thought would drive me crazy, whom I judged and wrote off as uncool or too cool. That I can learn something from everyone.

entering the cave

In those six weeks I learned things that have shaped me continually since then, though I have to admit forgetting how profoundly my character, my outlook and beliefs, were formed in the Austrian Alps. Once we got back home to Germany a week ago, I spent a jet lagged night reading through my journal from that summer in 2002, my first time in Europe. My 20 year old musings are at times cute, painfully embarrassing (I was just getting to know myself), at times profound and still true. And such a reminder of God's faithfulness. Reading through this old journal reminded me that the roots of all the spiritual growth I have known as an adult go down to the cold mountain stream that runs through Schladming and the teachings of HP.

I don't want to try to tell Hans Peter's story here. I can't. Not only is it not mine to tell, hundreds of people knew him better than I did. HP's ministry, not only at Tauernhof but traveling and speaking all over the world, has touched tens of thousands of lives. But he is part of my story, for whom I will be forever grateful. His strong leadership, blunt manner and challenging messages called out to the best within me. He stirred up my desire to grow and change, he made me want to "live a life worthy of the calling you have received" in Christ Jesus. Many students seemed a little bit afraid of him, intimidated by his expertise in the mountains and straightforward Austrian ways. But I saw the twinkle in his eye, the sarcasm and fun behind his rather stoic exterior. I wrote in my journal back then, "If he wasn't so demanding, I wouldn't be confident enough to do all these things [in the mountains]. The staff are totally not about babying us, especially Hans Peter. He just presses on, you don't have a choice or time to think or worry, just go. It's so good, no time to fear." One of the strategies of the program was not to reveal much about what activities we would actually be doing in the course, in order to simulate real life (we do not truly know what the next day will hold), teaching us trust, spontaneity and shaking us out of our desire to control our lives and circumstances.

spot the hut we were headed for...

I remember a particularly painful day in the climbing garden by Hofpürglhütte. I was new to rock climbing, and trying to find my footing wearing big hiking boots on the slick rocks was proving nearly impossible. I was complaining to my belayer why it wasn't working and Hans Peter hollered from a nearby peak, "Don't argue, just climb!" Even after HP scurried over to try to help me, I failed to make it to the top of the route. I fought back hot stinging tears while others took their turns. I was embarrassed and felt terrible, being someone who had always put her self-esteem and value in what she could achieve. Later I wrote in my journal "HP had tried to help me and I felt like I had failed him." But with the encouragement of others and knowing I would only feel better if I got up and conquered something, I completed the Klettersteig and went on with the day, proud to have overcome failure and fear. I'll never forget his words, it meant a lot to me that he noticed me and pushed me to go beyond my comfort zone to achieve what I guess he somehow knew that I could. Others told me later they would have been embarrassed if he had hollered at them like that, or perhaps found him too challenging. But for me, I needed that and it stirred me up to want to achieve the potential he saw in me.

Another day in that same climbing garden, with Heli sitting in the top spot

"Don't argue, just climb" became my motto in the following years, as I tried to stop arguing with God about all the reasons why I can't or don't want to do things and instead get on with obeying him, stepping out in trust. I hadn't thought about that now in a few years, but HP's wisdom has proven timely again.

We were all impressed with the stoic confidence of his children in the mountains. Lisa who told me, "God gave us legs to use them" as she cheerily hiked about 10 hours uphill with us. Lukas as an 11-year-old, helping us slow, somewhat scared, 20-somethings through a wind tunnel in the cave which blew out our lights, telling us in a semi-bored sounding Austrian accent, "I am coming, give me your bag."

I remember him teaching on death in the context of Ecclesiastes, quoting Psalm 90:12 and Amos 4:12, telling us to be prepared for and comfortable with it. Hans Peter told us, "We aren't afraid of dying as much as dying without having really lived." I think everyone would agree, Hans Peter was a man who really lived. And he read us a quote which I took down in my journal, "I depart from this life like a little boy running home from school."

Hans Peter truly was a spiritual father to me, his teaching and timely guidance forever changed me and the course of my life. Tauernhof taught me to love the local church and directed the passion I had for Jesus. We loved you HP and grieve with your beautiful wife and children. Thank you Hannelore, Lukas, Lisa and Eva for sharing him with all of us. His legacy lives on in the thousands of lives he touched, and the millions of lives they will in turn reach.

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it."

2 Timothy 3:14

Narrative Saves Lives

So there is a new "narrative mapping" tool out there, touted as the "new instagram for writers." You (may have) heard it here first.

Story + maps = me happy! 

A lot of my research has to do with concepts of place and space and how the spaces we inhabit shape us and we shape them, and how all of this is represented in fiction. (I am working on my doctoral dissertation in North American literature and cultural studies, specifically focusing on comparative English-Canadian and Québécois fiction.) These ideas can seem very abstract, or even "obvious," to the uninitiated. ("You are writing an entire book about 'the North?'" Eyes glaze over.) I have always had trouble wrapping my mind around some philosophical concepts, and I am thankful for those scholars who have summed up and deconstructed Lefebvre, Soja and Bhabha for the rest of us.

It took me a long time to decide to pursue a Master's degree in literature because I struggled with thoughts that it wasn't "important enough." (I started in 2008 and finished my final oral exam in 2010, the day before my maternity leave with our first child began.) I always wanted to make a difference in the world, to do something of eternal value. I had a five-year break between finishing my Bachelor's degree (from U of T while living in Quebec, another story) and starting my Master. During those intervening years I got to travel and volunteer at two Bible schools in Austria and Greece, met the man of my dreams (and beyond what I had on my little checklist), got married and settled in Konstanz. I started, then stopped, another M.A. program that wasn't for me. (In Toronto, we used words and books to study political science, not the statistics and SPSS of the KN school of public policy and management! Numbers are not my friend.) Getting over the shock of not succeeding in my studies for the first time was a major life lesson in not putting my self-worth in what I do and achieve, but who I am in Christ.

I had often felt divided, pulled between a career in academia and serving in "ministry." I knew doing an M.A. would take time and hard work and thus would leave less time to be directly invested in other things. A desire to learn, research, study and write has been inside of me since I was an embryo (or, as we tell our son when he asks where he was when we got married, or when mommy lived in Canada, since I was "in God's thoughts, but not on Earth yet.")

So back in 2006-08, I took a long time to decide to do an M.A. in literature. My husband has always encouraged me, he has always supported me in chasing my dreams and fulfilling my potential. Finally, I found encouragement in Daniel's story. Yes, that guy with the lions, though not that part specifically. Daniel the man God used greatly in a foreign kingdom to have a place of influence in society, he did a B.A. in literature and cultural studies (check it out.) Good enough for an OT prophet, good enough for me. But before this epiphany, I struggled with thoughts that literature didn't "really matter." I mean, this isn't medicine, it isn't going to save someone's life. 

Or could it?

Could narrative save someone's life? Could telling a story, and telling it well, actually give hope to someone in the pit of despair? Actually resonate with a stranger on the other side of the planet and make them feel less alone? Could it shine light on the evils of forced sex slavery, motivate just one person to kick up a fuss, to spread awareness, to raise funds, to facilitate freedom for a victim? Could narrative literally save the life of a 13 year old girl who is at this very moment locked in a dirty room near Hamburg's port, handcuffed and brutalized up to 40 times a day?

Hot tears burn my eyes as I write these words but they must be written. I must tell their stories.

Freedom starts with us.

Join me in the fight against human trafficking, won't you? To learn more about the problem and see how you can be part of the solution go to the A21 Campaign, whose goal is abolish the injustice of human trafficking and sex slavery in the 21st century. They are on the ground in several European source and destination countries, working to rescue and rehabilitate victims as well as prosecuting perpetrators. Join us in spreading freedom in Europe. It isn't just happening “over there,” it happens here. In our city, our country. Freedom starts with us.