Yes, absolutely. Ruthie taught middle-school math in a rural parish
in south Louisiana. I was the worldly sibling; she was the one who
wanted nothing more than to stay here at home. When we were at college
together, we rarely spent time with each other, because we were so
different. In Little Way, I tell the story of the time she sat
with my best friend and me at dinner in the cafeteria, listening to us
talk about Nietzsche, the death of God, and philosophical topics. She
stood up and told us we were full of crap (though I think the word was a
little more colorful), and that all our philosophical speculation was
vanity. What counted was what we did, not what we thought, or so
Ruthie thought. She was intensely practical, and very much
anti-intellectual (this, even though she made better grades than I
did).
Ruthie led a quiet life. She never much talked about God, just
remained faithful to the Methodist church in which we were raised, and
in which she and her husband Mike raised their daughters. You might have
thought Ruthie was a friendly person, a morally serious person, and
even a wise person. But what you didn't know about Ruthie -- well, what
I, her brother, didn't know about Ruthie -- was the love and devotion
she poured out on her students, many of whom came from poor and broken
families. At the visitation, I met so many people who told me some
variation of, "You don't know me, sir, but your sister was my teacher,
and this is how she changed my life." It was incredible. I saw that
Ruthie, a country Methodist, had a lot in common with St. Therese of
Lisieux, who described her own path to God as the "little way," in that
they both believed that it was not given to everyone to live a dramatic
life of grand gestures. They would be satisfied with what God gave them,
including where he placed them (a convent, a middle school) and do
their best to live and to act in pure love. This was Therese's little
way, and it also describes Ruthie's.
AD: Plekon (among others) has resisted the tendency of older
forms of hagiography to turn people into "plaster saints" or what
Cardinal Newman called "clothes-racks for virtues." Your book very
commendably manages to achieve a balance between recognizing the
goodness, sanctity even, in your sister, but also not hiding her
conflict with you. Was that a hard balance to maintain?
Yes, it very much was. The truth is, Ruthie was a saint, or at
least I think she was. But she was a human being too, and in my case, it
meant she was at times bitter and spiteful toward her brother. Ruthie
was a lot like our father, in that she didn't understand why anybody
would want to leave what we had here in Louisiana. I've called them
Bayou Confucians, because they believe life has a hierarchy, and one's
duty if to find one's place within that hierarchy, and live it out. For
Ruthie and my dad, my leaving was a sign of betrayal -- and nothing more
than that. To be fair, after my first, failed attempt to return, in the
mid-1990s, my father had a moment of grace in which he saw -- or said
he saw -- that my vocation required me to live away from here. The thing
is, we forget such moments of clarity. My father and my sister had a
very strong "poetic memory" (I think the phrase is Kundera's), in which
they selectively remembered details that caused a narrative to make
emotional sense to them. It made emotional sense for Rod to be here with
the family -- and ultimately, they wouldn't allow any facts to counter
that narrative within their hearts.
This caused me a lot of pain, and truth to tell, it still does.
Once Ruthie decided on a story, she hung onto it with the tenacity of a
snapping turtle. This served her well facing cancer; the story she hung
on to was that God loved her and would be with her no matter what. Don't
get me wrong, I believe that's a true story. The point here is the
strength with which she clung to that narrative. Unfortunately that
trait was destructive of her relationship with me. For a reason I don't
fully understand, she would not admit any facts that contradicted what
she wanted to believe about me and the things I loved. For Ruthie, to
have chosen a way of life other than the one we were prescribed by our
father was, it seems, an unforgivable sin. The thing is, there was only
one person in the world she judged so uncompromisingly: me.
I don't say all this to invite the reader's pity, but rather to
explore the mystery of my sister's character, and of human character.
One friend of mine told me the other day that reading my book, he has a
tough time accepting my judgment that Ruthie was probably a saint. Like
most people who have expressed this to me, he's thinking about the
bouillabaisse story, but also about my niece Hannah's revelation in
Paris, toward the end of the book. I appreciate his sympathy, but I
think in our time, we confuse sanctity with niceness. I can't deny
Ruthie's ugliness towards me, but I certainly cannot deny that that's
pretty much the only blemish on a lifetime of extraordinary goodness.
One does not obviate the other. St. Paul struggled with a thorn in his
flesh; Ruthie and I were the thorns in each other's flesh. The
difference is that Ruthie had a greater capacity than I to endure
emotional pain for the sake of sticking by her principles. My dad is the
same way. In most cases, this presents itself as evidence of a
principled character, which is what Ruthie was and my dad is. But at
times this refusal to examine critically one's own conclusions can
manifest as sheer obstreperousness. It's sometimes hard to know where to
draw the line.
Anyway, my goal in telling this story was to make the case for why I
consider my sister to be a saint, or in any case to have led a life of
sanctification, despite her all-too-human flaws. And I wanted to
indicate that I too likely played a role in turning my little sister
against me when we were young. The bouillabaisse story is, for me, the
key myth about my family's attitude to me in adulthood. But the early
childhood story with which I begin the book -- the story about Ruthie I
told in her eulogy -- is the key myth, in my mind, about the kind of
Christ-like character my sister had innately.
AD: Your title refers to St. Therese of Lisieux. Did your sister
ever read her autobiography or hear about her from you? What do you
think she would have thought of the comparison?
No, not to my knowledge, unless she saw the comparison on one of my
early blogs about her cancer. Ruthie was not well read, and certainly
not in the Catholic tradition. She was a conventional churchgoing
Methodist, but even her best friend Abby couldn't figure out why Ruthie
was so prayerful and spiritually minded, but never came to Bible study
or did anything more formal with the church. Ruthie would have reacted
against the comparison, not because of anything particular to Therese,
but because Ruthie would have considered it ridiculous and embarrassing
to compare her to a saint.
Had she read Therese, though, I think she would have felt a deep
kinship with the saint, who believed that the ordinary could be
sanctified through love. That's how Ruthie lived. One interesting thing
I've observed since moving back is how people around town will casually
mention to me that they talk to Ruthie, or will pray, asking Ruthie to
help them with some challenge. These are Protestants, mind you, but they
believe that Ruthie, their friend, lives with Christ now, and can still
hear them, and pray for them. Many times I've heard someone talk this
way about Ruthie, and thought, This is how we get saints -- in a
sociological sense, I mean. There was a holy person who lived in a
certain community, and her memory is revered over time, and she is
believed to be capable of hearing prayers and helping people after her
death. We think, maybe, that we're beyond that today, that saints
belonged to ages past. But I'm watching the process happen here. Mind
you, a Methodist will never be canonized, but then, most saints who ever
lived were never raised to the altar.
AD: What connections do you see between this book and your earlier book, Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots? Do
you think if you hadn't written the earlier book you might not have
been as open to seeing the virtues of life in a small town in southern
Louisiana?
I'm glad you asked that, because the progression from Crunchy Cons to Little Way tracks
a theme within the latter. I began to think more deeply about my own
conservatism, and to move in a more traditionalist direction, when I
grew deeper into my own Catholic faith after marriage, and when my wife
and I had our first child. As I point out in Little Way, my
strong tendency is toward contemplation, while Ruthie's was toward
action. I was satisfied to theorize about localism and traditionalism,
and make a few moves toward living a life more coherent with my beliefs,
but I remained a dilettante. Still, I had the theory in my mind, and
that was important.
The moment of conversion was standing outside the Methodist Church
at my sister's wake, seeing all those people there, and thinking about
the 19 months preceding that night -- from Ruthie's diagnosis until that
moment -- and grasping in both my mind and my heart that I was
witnessing the theories incarnate in the love and community of these
people. That night, for the first time, the things I professed as a
matter of theoretical ideals entered into my moral imagination in a
galvanizing way. If it hadn't been for 10 years of reading Wendell
Berry, Crunchy Cons, Front Porch Republic and all that, I might
not have been able to recognize the revelation on the church's lawn --
which is to say, I might not have been able to hear God's calling me
home.
AD: When Pope Benedict came to the US in 2008, he lamented at one
point the loss of Catholic "ghettos" especially among early immigrants
and recognized the need deracinated Catholics had today for new and
deeper forms of community. What role, if any, do you see churches
playing today in helping people find the kind of community your family
has been a part of in Starhill for generations?
I'm not sure, because I'm not sure what "church" means in America
today. We have become so individualistic in our approach to religious
faith that I don't have a clear model for what stable church community
looks like. When I returned to my hometown, I didn't return to the
church in which I was raised, the Methodist church, because I am now an
Orthodox Christian. Rather, I joined with some fellow Orthodox converts
in town, and we opened a mission. I find as a general matter people in
town these days are unaware of the theological differences between the
churches, or why they are important. That makes it easier to work across
denominational lines, but it also means that the loss of particularity,
and of social unity around a shared story, makes the kind of deep
community the Catholic ghettos experienced highly problematic.
At the same time, with reference to the churches, as Walker Percy
would say, what else is there? St. Francisville is a Christian town. Not
everybody goes to church, but the churches not everybody goes to are
Christian ones. The town is full of sinners, but there is enough
residual Christianity here that the faith is still felt as a force in
people's lives, in a way that it is not in most places I've lived
(Dallas being the great exception).
My sense, though, is that the Church -- by which I mean all
Christian churches -- has to become far more radical and conscious of
itself as a countercultural force, and as a countercultural community,
or Christianity will not endure. I'm not talking about adopting a
fortress mentality, but rather teaching ourselves and our children what
makes us different from others, why we believe the things that we do --
and why that matters. What's more, as my pastor says, Orthodoxy is not
an add-on to life; it is a way of life. All churches should regard what
they preach in that way. Church must not be merely the middle class at
prayer.
When I say "countercultural force," I'm not talking about being
culture warriors per se, but rather living as people who profess and
(more importantly) embody a way of life and a vision that serves as a
sign of contradiction to the modern world. Ruthie may not have been
theologically educated, or even much interested in theology, and she was
a flawed vessel, but the life she lived by staying in place and
submitting to the limits of place was, to me, a sign of contradiction,
and, I think, a call to conversion. It's not that we all must commit to
staying in one place, forever and ever, amen -- where would any of us be
if not for missionaries, not least among them St. Paul? -- but rather
Ruthie's story shows us how much a life lived in faithful service to and
friendship with a community can matter.
Still, I am aware that any words about the value of stability from a
man who has a track record of restlessness are bound to be taken with a
fistful of salt.
AD: Towards the end of the book, especially during the painful
conversation with your niece on the last night in Paris, a comparison
came to my mind in reading your struggle to reconcile the holiness and
love you saw in your sister with the unresolved conflict between the two
of you and her attitude towards you. The comparison was that of Lady
Marchmain (Ruthie) and Charles Ryder (you) in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Lady Marchmain was often thought of by others as being a saint, though
her simple, unquestioning piety (and adamantine summary judgments of
others) could be off-putting to some, including Ryder, who, early in the
book, is very much the questioning skeptic. Later he becomes a
believer. Do you think your sister's simple, unquestioning faith and
refusal to be mad at God has deepened your own faith and trust? Are the
questions for you greater or fewer since her death?
It has, but only indirectly -- and it has reinforced the lessons
I've been learning through the practice of Orthodox Christianity. As I
detail in the book, I've always been a Seeker; Ruthie was always an
Abider. I've been through a number of churches; Ruthie stayed in the
church in which we were raised. I don't say this to praise her,
necessarily; Ruthie had a considerable mind, but no curiosity about the
world of ideas. She was a mathematics teacher, and had a deep and
growing interest in science (she told me once that if she beat cancer,
she would like to go back to college and study forensic pathology.) What
I've learned through Ruthie is to put more value on what we come to
know through relationship, and less value on what we come to know
through reading or intellection. Ruthie was not balanced; neither am I.
But I need more of what she had.
Similarly, through Orthodoxy, I've learned to focus far more on the
conversion of the heart. As a Catholic, I was stuck in my head.
Orthodox polemicists tend to blame this kind of thing on the nature of
Western Christianity. They may be onto something, but I choose not to
think about that. I choose to blame myself. If I had not been a
Catholic, I still would have been this kind of Christian. Ruthie
excelled in being present in the moment -- even before she was
diagnosed. I am bad at that. I am always analyzing the present moment,
standing at some remove from it. I have always been mystically inclined,
but tripped up by my seeming inability to be still and to be open. I've
always faulted Ruthie to some degree for her lack of curiosity, and her
instinct to pass negative judgment on anything she didn't understand.
But what a source of strength her unquestioning trust in God was as she
fought for her life. I realized, as I say in the book, that if I had
awakened one day to find that I had Stage Four cancer, I would read
every book on my shelves, consult with monks, priests, and sages,
agonize over it publicly and privately, and if I were lucky, I would end
up exactly where Ruthie started: serene, trusting in God's love, and
learning how to cherish every moment of life.
She could do that because that's how she lived. Hers was a very
simple faith, but felt in her marrow. That made all the difference.
AD: Sum up for us what you hope to have accomplished with the book and what you hope people will take away from it.
First and foremost, I hope people will reflect on the extraordinary
life of this ordinary person, my sister Ruthie, and grasp how both
goodness and greatness is possible for all of us. As Leon Bloy said, the
only tragedy in life is not to have been a saint. I look at Ruthie's
life and understand what he means. There was nothing unusual in her
life. She was born in an obscure town in the Deep South, married her
high school sweetheart, built a house on the land where she was raised,
had children, taught school, went fishing, got cancer, and died. Yet
within that narrative, she found and lived out such spiritual grandeur,
concealed by the very ordinariness of her life. It's there for all of
us, I hope to show.
Second, this is a book about home. I hope to speak to restless
Americans everywhere -- people like me -- and provoke serious thought
and discussion about the meaning of home, and how to achieve the kind of
stability we want and need to flourish, but that seems so far away.
Ruthie had limitations, but she knew something that so very many of us
do not. It's also true, though, as my father's startling confession at
the end of the book reveals, that we can never fully know whether we've
chosen wisely.
Third, this is a book about family -- the love we share, and the
wounds we inflict on each other. My father and my sister wanted me to
come home because they loved me. Yet the way they loved me -- the
demanding, intolerant way -- made that impossible, and has set up
obstacles even today that I doubt will ever be overcome. These stories
we tell ourselves about ourselves and our families, they matter. They
really do. A tragedy of my sister and my dad, who were and are
exceptionally good and loving people, is that the thing they wanted more
than they wanted most things -- a united family, sharing the same place
-- they made unattainable. I think we can all learn from that.
AD: What other writing projects are coming up next? Are you at work on another book at the moment?
I'm not, but I hope to be soon. I'm looking for another project.
This book has, I think, profoundly changed the way I see my vocation.
I've been drifting pretty steadily away from political writing since the
end of the Bush years, but the overwhelming reaction to Little Way has
made me rethink the power of narrative journalism, of storytelling.
Ruthie's story made me see the world in a different way, and caused me
to change my life -- I think for the better, though this new path has
brought with it other challenges. I'm on the lookout for this kind of
story now -- stories that tell the truth about the way we live, and the
ways we might live, and give people hope. Anyway, the language we use to
talk politics has been completely blasted and evacuated of meaning. We
need fewer op-ed writers, pundits, and purveyors of argument, and more
storytellers.
