The Mountain

Cathy LaGrow 25 Comments

On the third Saturday of May, in 1980. a thirty-year-old scientist named David Johnston headed up the gorgeous Toutle River Valley in Washington State, one of the prettiest places on God’s green earth. Johnston, who worked for the United States Geological Survey, had agreed to fill in that weekend for a colleague, manning an observation camp on Coldwater Ridge in the Cascade Mountains.

Although Johnston had earned his PhD just two years previously, his short career had already taken him around the country, and he was already considered an expert in his field. For the last two months, he’d been based in the Pacific Northwest, monitoring a troubling series of earthquakes and phreatic activity. He and his co-workers had been so alarmed by what they’d seen, in fact, they’d successfully lobbied to close the large, tourist-heavy Toutle River area to the public (a move that did not sit well with local authorities.)

After “making the rounds” that day, Johnston settled into his “home” for the next 24 hours – a small, well-worn camper parked on top of a mess of rocks, surrounded by piles of broken tree branches. Not a luxurious setting by any means…unless you factored in the location.

Spread out at Johnston’s feet was the kind of view that eats million-dollar views for breakfast. As far as the eye could see (and that happened to be mile after mile, from here), there was not a single man-made object.  Below his feet, the ground dropped away into a wide valley that was ringed by towering, snow-capped peaks. Everything sparkled in the sun like jewels: the silvery river threading its way down the center of the valley; the deep emerald-colored evergreens blanketing every square inch of flowing mountainside; the nearly sapphire-blue sky.

Although Coldwater Ridge was at an elevation of more than 3000 feet, and it was only the middle of May, the day was postcard-pretty – so warm that Johnston was dressed in his shirtsleeves and a pair of jeans. Continue reading →

I Don’t Know How She Does It

Cathy LaGrow 17 Comments

We need to talk about Alice Munro. Oh, how we need to talk about Alice.

On most subjects, it is difficult for me to pin down my “favorite” thing: meal, drink, movie, color – there are just too many different categories, people. Who could possibly be so decisive? But when it comes to writing, I have no such difficulty. Of the thousand or so different authors I’ve read, for my money, Alice Munro is the best.

Alice is a Canadian who writes fiction, mostly short stories, and she has earned the highest respect of virtually all literary critics and most successful writers. Think of a writer you love (go ahead), and I can almost guarantee that not only are they familiar with Alice, they are at least slightly in awe of her talent. The perennial literary darling Jonathan Franzen calls her “the Great One.” In a 2004 piece in The New York Times (which was ostensibly a review of Alice’s book Runaway, but which was actually a lengthy essay on Alice’s sheer awesomeness), Franzen said this:

“She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion. For as long as I’m immersed in a Munro story, I am according to an entirely make-believe character the kind of solemn respect and quiet rooting interest that I accord myself in my better moments as a human being.”

Whenever Alice pens a new short story, it is snapped up by one of the most prestigious publications in the world. Her work is included in nearly every annual “Best of the Year” story collection. In 2009, she won the Man Booker International Prize (given for a lifetime body of work), only the third person to have done so.

Yet Alice Munro is not a household name – and to serious readers, this is a serious affront.

Here is how it is between Alice and me: I don’t know how she does it. And I couldn’t care less. (I spent about five minutes, once, trying to figure out her technique, and then I wisely gave up.)

Can I at least describe what Alice does? I can try, but the problem there is, unless you are actually Alice herself, you don’t possess the literary talent to do her work justice. Quoting her directly is a better method of illustrating what she does.

Well, since you asked.

From the 1997 compilation of her best work, Selected Stories:

“The doctor, the heart specialist, said that her heart was a little wonky and her pulse inclined to be jumpy. She thought that made her heart sound like a comedian and her pulse like a puppy on a lead. She had not come fifty-seven miles to be treated with such playfulness but she let it pass, because she was already distracted by something she had been reading in the doctor’s waiting room.”

And from another story:

“Stella wonders where this new voice of Catherine’s comes from, this pert and rather foolish and flirtatious voice. Drink wouldn’t do it. Whatever Catherine has taken has made her sharper, not blunter. Several layers of wispy apology, tentative flattery, fearfulness, or hopefulness have simply blown away in this brisk chemical breeze.”

And here is the final paragraph of one of my favorite stories, “Material”:

“Gabriel came into the kitchen before he went to bed, and saw me sitting with a pile of test papers and my marking pencils. He might have meant to talk to me, to ask me to have coffee, or a drink, with him, but he respected my unhappiness as he always does; he respected the pretense that I was not unhappy but preoccupied, burdened with these test papers; he left me alone to get over it.”

It is often noted that Alice’s short stories contain more depth than most full-length novels. Not only does she waste no paragraphs or sentences, she seems to waste no words. But her prose is not terse, like Hemingway’s; it is rich and full, it breathes and floats and is full of warmth.

It’s also as sharp as a dagger.

There are no zombies in Alice’s work, no explosions or natural disasters, no fantastic plots, very few murders. This is not how she keeps a reader turning the pages. Alice generally writes about simple people: housewives and grandparents and bewildered young women and children, in the most normal of settings: in cars, on farms, in retirement homes or back porches or shabby living rooms – but in the middle of this perfect ordinariness, she (as one reviewer put it) “flays” her characters, exposes their inner lives in ways that are shocking in the sense of recognition they stir in the reader.

Even if you have never been in these situations yourself, you think, “Yes! Yes. That is exactly how it is.” Even if you have never met anyone like these characters, you believe that Alice has pegged them perfectly.

Within a sentence or two, Alice gives you exactly enough information to completely understand how each character operates and what motivates them. This is in no way an easy skill. There are very few novelists who can do this, and none do it as well as Alice Munro.

Virtually all of her stories are sprinkled with the kind of sentences that most talented writers are happy to craft a few times in their entire careers. Like:

“Because if she let go of her grief even for a minute it would only hit her harder when she bumped into it again.”

Or when a character narrates this:

“This was the first time I understood how God could become a real opponent, not just some kind of nuisance or large decoration.”

Who the freak writes like this?!

The author Pat Conroy, in explaining his love of reading (and great writing), says this:

“I cheer when a writer stops me in my tracks, forces me to go back and read a sentence again and again, and I find myself thunderstruck, grateful the way readers always are when a writer takes the time to put them on the floor.”

Which nicely illustrates the difference between mediocre writers – or even good writers – and great ones. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between “literature” and every other kind of fiction, I believe that would be it. Average writers may have the ability to capture me with a story, but they do not write stunning sentences that put me on the metaphorical floor with their beauty.

Alice Munro does this, to a greater degree than any other writer I’ve read. In fact, if I was going to be stranded on a deserted island, and could only have one work of fiction with me, I’d choose her Selected Stories.

Yeah, she’s that good.

Look, Alice doesn’t have to be your favorite writer. You don’t have to love her work as much as I do. Her stories don’t have to be your “cup of tea.”

But, my dear fellow writers: if, while reading Alice’s best work (and Selected Stories or Runaway are excellent places to start – or shoot, check out her story “Dimension,” here), you do not at least recognize the level of skill she possesses, if you do not see the genius of what she’s doing – well then, in my opinion, you have some more work to do.

That’s all.

Have you experienced the writings of Alice The Great? And which authors put you “on the floor” with their writing?

All Fall Down – my 9-11 memories

Cathy LaGrow 20 Comments

This recollection of 9-11 isn’t important, except that every recollection of 9-11 is.

The weather is stupidly beautiful today, here in the Northwest. It is warm (drifting towards hot), with clear blue skies and a faint breeze. It doesn’t seem like anything bad could or should happen on such a perfectly gorgeous day. Which is, of course, how the people of New York felt ten years ago, when a handful of deranged thugs flew right out of their 13th century minds and into the heart of that city.

We had been back in Oregon for exactly one year, in 2001, and had just moved from a charming brick townhouse in downtown Portland, to a lovely plot of land out “in the boondocks” of Oregon City. I was thirty years old, and had not yet experienced the feeling of vulnerability particular to those who have children. I felt good and strong and safe.

I wouldn’t have even thought to articulate that.

On the eleventh of September, Dan had already left for work when I turned on the television for a moment. I noticed that ABC was streaming “live” instead of showing “Good Morning America” – and they were talking about a plane hitting a building in New York City. I flipped to the other networks and saw they were covering the same story.

Although I was already running late, I sat on the edge of the couch to watch for a few minutes. Then another plane plowed into another building, and the news anchors became visibly tense. There was breaking news, there were conflicting reports. Someone mentioned a third plane; theories were floated. Evidently the authorities were going on high alert. Then the first building went down.

There are few moments in life when you are truly horrified, in the most literal sense of the word. This was one of them. I watched live as one of the most massive buildings on earth, presumably full of people, collapsed in what seemed like slow motion. I watched, paralyzed, as confusion unfolded. What had just happened? Was this an accident? How many people were in there? Could they be saved? What about those other planes?

What on earth had just happened?

I stood. I paced. As everything on the television screen turned to gray – gray billowing smoke, gray rubble, gray faces streaked with ash and shock – I prayed. I cried. I called my husband, and then my father. “Dad,” I said, my voice shrill, “they say we’re being attacked. We’re under attack!” I stayed glued to the television through the plane hitting the Pentagon, the plane hitting the field. Eventually, feeling the need to be around other people, I drove in to work.

I was a U.S. Customs Broker by trade: my job was to do the paperwork and computer work necessary to get freight classified and cleared through Customs and other relevant agencies. But in those days following the attack, there was little to do. Planes were grounded. Cargo ships were halted. Government enforcement agencies were in lock-down.

So my co-workers and I sat at our computers and sent e-mails and surfed the Internet, searching for information, for explanations. Slowly, they came. Yes, this was an attack. Yes, we had the names and faces of those responsible. And heartbreakingly, as the hours dragged by: No, there were no survivors.

In the weeks that followed, I found my strength and center, as usual, in words. Thousands of words, by dozens of authors. I devoured information on the news web sites: the latest updates, what “we” were doing, what “they” were doing. Slowly, details on the terrorists emerged: a flight school here, an expired visa there. I pored over on-line profiles of the victims – firefighters, policemen, businessmen, passengers – until I realized I could never get through them all. And I read scores of articles and editorials and essays, from all the major newspapers and magazines.

I read galvanizing words from The President: “We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”

Sober words from the humorist Dave Barry: “I’m not naïve about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don’t set out to kill innocent people. We don’t cheer when innocent people die.”

Fiery words from Leonard Pitts, Jr., in an open letter to the terrorists: “So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that’s the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don’t know my people. You don’t know what we’re capable of. You don’t know what you just started. But you’re about to learn.”

And ancient words of comfort and hope, from King David: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

It is difficult, now, to conjure up the atmosphere of that singular time period, following the attacks. For weeks afterward, news not related to 9-11 simply didn’t exist. There was no weather, no local stories, no celebrity news (unless it related to the tragedy.) Country music artists scrambled to record songs about flags and bombs, which were then played repeatedly on FM and AM stations of every format. Patriotism and goodwill enveloped us all.

There were blood drives, and money drives. Schoolchildren made cards for survivors and sent packages to soldiers. Elderly men wearing veteran’s caps were stopped in hospital lobbies, and thanked for their service. American flags waved everywhere. Makeshift memorials sprang up all over, in people’s yards, on storefronts, on cars.

The United Airlines cargo department in Portland built a permanent memory garden outside their tiny, utilitarian office. Portland’s spunky mayor chartered a “unity flight” to New York, her way of shaking a small, symbolic fist in the terrorist’s faces. A grizzled, bearded man dressed in camouflage stood on a bridge over the interstate for days on end, silently holding an American flag over the railing. Most of us passing underneath him honked our horns in solidarity.

It took a long, long time for the impact of that day to lessen, for those of us not directly involved. Some things in this country have changed forever, particularly on security issues. My (former) company, like all companies in our field, now has a visitor’s log, and identification badges, and a lock on the door leading into the foyer. What had been “U.S. Customs” for my entire career is now called “Customs and Border Protection.” You can no longer accompany friends and family to their gate at the airport. I no longer feel invulnerable to bombs in my own country.

And so on – and life goes on.

The passage of time rubs the jagged edges of memory away – perhaps this is time’s ultimate gift. Life shifts, and evolves into a new normal, and the details of the past slip away, no matter how painful or glorious they were.

But each of us who watched the events of 9-11 unfold have our own unique memories of that day: a day when the world split in two, when heroes and villains were thrust into history by the dozens, when innocence was lost and courage was revealed and not all of God’s children came home.

And we’ll never forget.

Needing Truth – ATCL

Cathy LaGrow Leave a comment

It is no secret, to my faithful readers, that I love learning, and information. Perhaps a little more than is strictly appropriate.

Actually, “love” might not quite be a strong enough word.

Nevertheless, there are many times, especially when the bad news of the world gets me down, when I crave something much deeper than information. I want Truth – that elusive thing that is at once delicate and as strong as steel.

This post was originally published on All The Church Ladies, a website which has closed. I am in the process of moving all my ATCL posts back over here.

And I’m Worth It

Cathy LaGrow 1 Comment

I remember so vividly the moment I first realized that my worth as a human being had nothing to do with my performance as one. It was a moment that changed everything.

Growing up in a volatile religious household, I’d been taught that a person was only as good as their next “A,” their next blue ribbon, their next superb performance. Achievement and behavior were given the highest priority in our world. So I excelled at school, and in sports (as much as my non-Olympic body let me), and in music, and I was the most obedient child you’ve ever seen.

But it was still never good enough, as I heard repeatedly, relentlessly. Not by a country mile. So at 18 I got married, and moved across the country, and promptly went to pieces.

After spending a couple of years in a suffocating black depression, during which I cried nearly every day (sometimes for hours), I emerged into a kind of spiritual no-man’s-land.

I’d believed in God all my life but had never felt connected to Him. My concept of God was (as Anne Lamott perfectly put it): “God as high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files.”

Even prayer had become a chore for me, a mental battering of fists against a solid barricade. Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. You’ve given me no choice, God.  I thought. I’m going to run in the opposite direction.

By 1997, at just 26 years old, I’d reached the tattered end of my rope. I’d become so dead inside I never cried anymore, not even when I had reason to. My marriage was virtually over. “Running in the opposite direction” had worked – I’d screwed up so badly, I’d been asked to step down from my position as church pianist, the only activity for which I still felt any passion at all.

No longer caring what happened to me, I stopped wearing my seatbelt, a small act of listless defiance. Speeding along the Atlanta freeways at 90 miles an hour, I played a cosmic game of chicken with God. Take me, don’t take me, I thought. It doesn’t matter.

One evening at home, I walked into our spare bedroom looking for some papers I needed. Rifling through boxes, I came across a book I’d been given years earlier during counseling sessions – a book I’d never bothered to read. It was titled The Search for Significance, by Robert McGee.

Sitting on the beige carpet in that cluttered room, I opened the book up and started to read. And when I got to Chapter 6, all Heaven broke loose.

“I have great worth” (I read) “apart from my performance, because Christ gave his life for me, and imparted great value to me.”

Say what? I read it again. I have great worth apart from my performance…

Completely stunned, I read that sentence at least a dozen times. Tears started to pool in my eyes, then spill down my cheeks. Eventually, I moved on to the next sentence.

“I am deeply loved, fully pleasing, totally forgiven, accepted and complete in Christ.”

Deeply loved? Fully pleasing? I had never heard such a thing. I read the words over and over – I would have scraped them off the page and eaten them, if I could have. They shook me to my core.

Before long I was curled up on the floor, sobbing. I lay there for a long time, holding the book sideways on the carpet, next to my face, so I could re-read those mind-bending, heart-mending words whenever the tears eased up. This wasn’t Grace soft and demure – this was Grace as a tidal wave, Grace that bellowed, Grace that smashed through the ugly lies that had paralyzed me, the lies that said that I was worthless. Not good enough. Unloved.

Over the next few months, I repeated those two sentences to myself hundreds of times, until the message was chiseled into my heart: My fundamental worth had absolutely nothing to do with my behavior, and everything to do with a beautiful God nailed to a rugged beam over two thousand years ago.

With his death, Christ had absorbed every worthless thing about me, and from his ruin, I’d gathered the only descriptions of myself I had ever needed, would ever need.

Worthy. Accepted. Loved.

I do not just believe this to be true – I know it. I would die for it. It is the revelation that has let me finally, truly live.

This post was originally published for my friend, the fabulous fellow writer/blogger/runner/pianist/Mommy/Christian Alise Wright. You can find it by clicking here!