Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry: A Faith in Fiction Discussion Guide

SYNOPSIS (via the publisher)

“This is a book about Heaven,” says Jayber Crow, “but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell.” It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town’s barber.

Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow’s acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty.

He began his search as a “pre–ministerial student” at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with “Old Grit,” his profound professor of New Testament Greek.

“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”

“And how long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.”

“That could be a long time.”“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”

Wendell Berry’s clear–sighted depiction of humanity’s gifts—love and loss, joy and despair—is seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. INTERPRETING FICTION - The book begins with this notice: “NOTICE - Persons attempting to find a “text” in this book will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a “subtext” in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise “understand” it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.   BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.”
Why do you think this notice was included? How do you think it should affect the way we discuss this book? 

2. CONVERSIONS - As a way of remembering some of the book, Jayber seems to go through a number of turning points, or conversions: What were some of these?

3. PLACE - So much of the book is about place. After he determines to go home to Port William, the world Jayber inhabits is all sacred. He writes, “And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.”
Is this familiar to you, or does it describe a different way of seeing the physical world?

4. TIME - Early in the book, Jayber describes reflections on the water. He eventually lives by the river watching the surface of the water. He connects with the river as a metaphor of past, present, and future. “The surface of the river is like a living soul, which is easy to disturb, is often disturbed, but, growing calm, shows what it was, is, and will be.”
This book has a long view of time and how individuals, communities, families, and places change over time. What did you notice about the passage of time in this book?

5. RELIGION - Jayber sees the world in a thoroughly Christian way, but he admits streaks of doubt and doesn’t think much of the rotating cast of preachers he hears in church. “To them, the soul was something dark and musty, stuck away for later. In their brief passage through or over it, most of the young preachers knew Port William only as it theoretically was (“lost”) and as it theoretically might be (“saved”).” 
He also writes, “the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”
What did you think of Jayber’s Christianity?

6. MEMBERSHIP - Jayber sees the people of Port William as belonging to the Membership. What can we learn from his understanding of a community?

7. WORK - Jayber dropped out of seminary and gave up his calling to become a preacher. In becoming Port William’s barber he fulfilled a unique social role and in his other work too. What roles did Jayber fulfill for his community?

8. THE NEWS, THE ECONOMY, AND THE WAR - Jayber is critical of the wars and the aggressive modern economy. What are examples of this, and what did you think of his ideas? Is he just an old crank? An idealist? Or did you find him compelling on these themes?

9. LOVE and FIDELITY - After Jayber sees Troy in Hargrave with another woman (not his wife Mattie), Jayber jumps out of the roadhouse’s bathroom window, abandoning Clydie to walk home. Why do you think he responded this way? What did you make of his “marriage” to Mattie?

10. HEAVEN - “This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.”
In what ways is this book about heaven? What do you think Jayber means?

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok: A Faith in Fiction Discussion Guide

SYNOPSIS (via the publisher)

Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels, even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.

Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time, his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.

PERSONAL REFLECTION by Michael Winters

Someone in our discussion group pointed out that this story is like a superhero origin story. It’s true. Asher struggles to please his parents and fumbles at fitting into his community but he has a gift of artistic talent. With the help of a few guides along the way, he figures out how to overcome his challenges, though there are many negative consequences in the wake.

This book was excellent for discussion in our context of a church-based arts program. Reading this book made me even more want to help foster a culture of acceptance and welcome for artists in our own Christian community. Asher’s community didn’t know what to do with artists. There wasn’t room for Asher to be his full creative self and thrive there. I hope we can help make room for people to be their full creative selves through Sojourn Arts and at Sojourn Midtown.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The paintings Asher paints and exhibits at the end of the book bring the tension between him and his family to a breaking point. What do you think of Asher’s decision to make and exhibit those paintings?

2. Various characters have different ideas about the role of the artist in society. What did Jacob Kahn, the Rebbe, Asher’s mom and Asher’s dad think the role of an artist was? Do you agree or disagree with their ideas?

3. At one point when he is young, Asher’s father questions whether Asher’s artistic gift is from “the Other Side”, meaning not from God. Later, Asher himself questions his gift, too. What do you make of Asher’s gift and his seemingly intrinsic drive to create?

4. Asher has a rich inner world that his parents don’t seem to see. What did you notice about Asher when he was young?

5. As Asher continues making art in his youth, tensions develop not just with his parents but with his community. The religious community he’s part of has clear expectations for a “good Jewish boy.” Asher mostly wants to please the community but finds himself at odds with it. What did you think about the role of the religious community in Asher’s life?

6. A number of times through the book Asher is drawn to Christian imagery of Jesus, such as pietà and crucifixion images. What do you think these images meant to him?

Jack by Marilynne Robinson: A Faith in Fiction Discussion Guide

SYNOPSIS (via the publisher)

Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.

Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now.

Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity.

PERSONAL REFLECTION by Michael Winters

John Ames Boughton, aka Jack, is a different character than his namesake John Ames, the main character of Robinson’s Gilead. And as Jack is a different kind of character, the book is a different kind of book. Not as soaring and transcendent as Gilead or Lila, Jack still captured my attention with its characters’ complexities and philosophical dialogue. Some in our discussion group found the book a little slow moving, but the slower pace rewards with deep insights around human nature and Robinson’s returning themes around grace and religious belief. I thought this book a great fit for our Faith in Fiction discussion group. We especially enjoyed talking about the references and parallels to stories found in Genesis.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The first quarter of the book follows a long conversation between Jack and Della when they surprisingly find themselves locked in a cemetery together at night. As the long night is ending, Jack wonders, “What would be the one sufficient thing to say, before the flood of light swept over them, now that their world was ending? Amen, he thought. (p. 75)” Why do you think Jack thought “Amen” was a fitting response to that strange night?

2. In the cemetery, Jack and Della imagine that the world is ending and that they could be like a new Adam and Eve. In reality, they’re still surrounded by a society that doesn’t approve of their interracial relationship, which is also illegal. What did you notice about the social and family dynamics revealed by their relationship?

3. Jack understands himself to be a shady, shabby character who can’t help but cause harm. After quoting scripture ironically, Jack tells Della he’s “the Prince of Darkness, she replies, “No, you’re a talkative man with holes in his socks.” Jack says, “You saw them?” and she replies, “No, I just knew they were there.”
   Della doesn’t accept Jack’s dark view of himself. She see something else in him. At one point in the cemetery she says, “I think most people feel a difference between their real lives and the lives they have in the world. But they ignore their souls, or hide them, so they can keep things together, keep an ordinary life together. You don’t do that. In your own way, you’re kind of—pure.” (p. 73)
   What do you think she sees in him?

4. Della has a lot going well for her. She’s got a good job and comes from a respected family. She’s attractive. Why do you think she’s willing to risk her career and her relatively good social standing for a relationship with Jack?

5. Jack speaks of “harmlessness,” sometimes feeling it was more than he could aspire to, but he wants to live a life that doesn’t cause harm. What do you make of that as a life philosophy?

6. Jack has a comical introduction to the black church in St. Louis and later develops a conversation with the pastor there. Both Della and Jack’s fathers are pastors too. What role do pastors and the church play in the book?

7. Clothing is a recurring theme in the book. When Della and Jack first meet she mistakes him for a preacher due to the suit he’s wearing. He eventually trades that suit in for a shabbier one that won’t lead anyone to think that way about him. He also is aware of his nakedness under his clothes. What do you think Jack’s relationship with his clothing says about him?

8. Jack changes the way he’s living after he becomes attracted to Della. What does he do differently? Do you think he’s really a changed man by the end of the book?

9. Are there any takeaways for you? Any one thing you want to remember from reading this book?

Other related resources:

1. Russell Moore interviews Marilynne Robinson about Jack

2. "Loneliness in Marilynne Robinson’s Jack” by Amy Stinson, at Rabbit Room

3. "Grace in Marilynne Robinson’s Jack” by Amy Stinson, at Rabbit Room

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi: A Faith in Fiction Discussion Guide

SYNOPSIS (via Penguin Random House)

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut.

PERSONAL REFLECTION by Michael Winters

When I was younger I somehow picked up the idea that faith wasn’t supposed to change. You were supposed to place your faith in Jesus and then you were just supposed to always “believe.” More recently I heard someone teach that Christian maturity requires that your ideas about God will change and this strikes me as true. In church-based ministry over the years I’ve seen many people come to a place where their faith needed to change in order to mature, but instead they just cast aside belief and tried to ignore eternal questions. In reading of Gifty’s childhood faith and what happens as it’s confronted by tragedy and time, we read a testimony of how a life of faith can go. It’s not a triumphant or idealized story, and though it’s fictional, there’s much truth in it.

Transcendent Kingdom was a perfect pick for our Faith in Fiction reading group. Like the name of the group says, we pick books where faith plays an important role in the story, placing faith in the power of fiction to help us better understand life and our place in it. In addition to the themes directly related to faith, Transcendent Kingdom also has so many insights into how relationships work or don’t work, the state of the American dream, and the crisis of addiction and mental health disorders. The book includes some difficult topics and doesn’t shy away from harsh language, but provides a story well worth considering. I, and others in our discussion group, felt the book evoked a lot of empathy, but I also felt judgment toward some of the characters. That’s one of my takeaways—maximize and act on the empathy, and let the judgment fade away. The story makes clear that our words and actions have consequences in others’ faith journeys.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. In Gifty’s early childhood, she has a sweet and honest child-like faith in God. What did you notice about her beliefs before her brother’s death?

2. Nana’s death is a turning point in Gifty’s life and in her faith in God. What happens to Gifty after her brother’s death? How does she try to cope with this tragedy?

3. During her PhD studies with mice, Gifty realizes she thinks of the work as holy.

   “The collaboration that the mice and I have going in this lab is, if not holy, then at least sacrosanct. I have never, will never, tell anyone that I sometimes think this way, because I’m aware that the Christians in my life would find it blasphemous and the scientists would find it embarrassing, but the more I do this work the more I believe in a kind of holiness in our connection to everything on Earth. Holy is the mouse. Holy is the grain the mouse eats. Holy is the seed. Holy are we.”

   What do you make of this?

4. Pastor John and the Pentecostal church he leads in Alabama are helpful to Gifty’s family in some ways, but they are also revealed to be deeply flawed. How did you feel toward the characters from the church?

5. On page 44, Gifty describes the scientific question she’s trying to answer: “Could optogenetics be used to identify the neural mechanisms involved in psychiatric illnesses where there are issues with reward seeking, like in depression, where there is too much restraint in seeking pleasure, or drug addiction, where there is not enough?”

   She seems to see her mom’s deep depression and her brother’s addiction as two sides of the same coin. Her experiences with them definitely seem to drive her work. What else do you think contributes to her choice of work and the high level at which she desires to perform?

6. Gifty’s family doesn’t overtly display affection through words or touch. How do they relate emotionally? What’s the style of their communication? And how do you think these ways of relating contributed to the outcomes they experienced?

7. There are many examples of overt racism described in the book. How did racism affect Gifty and her family?

8. Gifty says, “I used to believe that God never gives us more than we can handle, but then my brother died and my mother and I were left with so much more; it crushed us. It took me many years to realize that it’s hard to live in this world...But to be alive in the world, every day, as we are given more and more and more, as the nature of “what we can handle” changes and our methods for how we handle it change, too, that’s something of a miracle.”

   Toward the end of the book, Gifty retains some sense of her religious upbringing, and the end of the book sees her sitting in an empty church with eyes open, not praying. Do you think there’s been some resolution for Gifty? How did you feel at the end of the book?

9. Are there any takeaways for you? Any one thing you want to remember from reading this book?