On remaining "curiously untouched"

Book Club: ATGIB Chs 50-54. LIVE CHAT in the comments at 3pm CST!

Aug 28, 2021

Hello everyone!

Looking forward to chatting in just a bit. The chat will be a spoiler free zone for general reflections on the book and on children’s spirituality more broadly. I will however include just a bit here on the final chapters of the book. So consider this your SPOILER ALERT if you’ve not yet finished!

A Tree Grows a Landmark | northbrooklynnews.com

“Brooklyn was, to Betty Smith, the place of possibilities. That in between all of the brick and mortar, there were families living their lives, facing all of the complexities of life, education, work, and just doing their best with what they had.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams

Please tell me I am not the only person who cried finishing this book. What a lovely last few chapters. Betty Smith wrapped things up beautifully without tying things up with an unrealistic, tidy little bow. Throughout the book, we have been witness to Francie’s and her family’s ability to live in tension with the hard and the good.

After Francie’s realization of the dishonesty of Lee (grrr!), she consults Katie and seems to hope for some validation. Katie reflects on all the ways she has tried to protect Francie from over the years - hardship, abuse, and heartache. And yet, she realizes that “one sunny day they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them.”

“Here was a girl sixteen years old; six years younger than he. A girl - in spite of bright red lipstick and grown-up clothes and a lot of knowledge picked up here and there - who was yet tremulously innocent; a girl who had come face to face with some of the evil of the world and most of its hardships, and yet had remained curiously untouched by the world.”

And yet, Katie had done so well with what she had to prepare Francie for this moment. I suppose that is the best any of us can hope for when we commit ourselves to nurturing children. To give and to shape and to love and to hold so that they have some preservation of innocence, wonder, and hope when they look out at the world. What can we impart and nurture within the children in our lives, so like Francie, they can remain “curiously untouched”?

This seems especially poignant right now when we are bearing witness to beauty and pain all over the world. How do we hold together the turmoil and beauty around us? How do we respond with compassion to the former and gratitude for the latter without minimizing either? Maybe it has something to do with Granma Mary Rommely’s wisdom, “To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”

What actions would I take if I were seeing the pain in Afghanistan for the first and last time? What would I say, write, or create if I knew that I’d never see or smell another wisteria bloom softly swaying in the wind?

I often wonder about how I can help my children see the reality of the pain while still bearing witness to hope, beauty, and the truth of resurrection. I wonder how theirs and my own spirituality is nurtured in how we bear witness to the world around us. I think there’s a lot I could learn from Francie in this endeavor.

I cried as I read about Francie’s last visit to the little library. In the article linked above, Betty Smith’s daughter says that library is where it all began for Betty, where she began to dream and discover her love for books, reading, and writing.

“She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.”

I’m fresh on the heels of leaving Cambridge, the place that has felt more like home to me than anywhere else I’ve lived. And I’ve worried about this - how I will remember it, how the passage of time will change my memories, and how I will change in the years to come. And yet, like Betty Smith, I discovered so much of myself in that place, and I know the significant shaping of my spirituality - my relationships with myself, others, the world around me, and God - is something I can hold on to. The discoveries, the dreams, the values - those will stay, and in that way, Cambridge stays too.

I wonder about your own significant places and how they have nurtured your own spirituality? What dreams, relationships, and values do you carry as a result?

I felt a lot of hope for Francie and her future as she packed up her home and prepared to leave for college. I loved how she said she “knew God a little better now” and how this seemed to open the door for her dreams to be renewed and rediscovered as she is becoming a woman.

I wonder if you can identify ways you know God differently now than you did as a child? How does that impact you?

And finally, I wonder what we can learn about the character of God from Francie? Considering we all bear God’s image, and that means we learn more about God by knowing one another, how has Francie revealed something of the character of God to you?

The book ends with a final reflection of the tree:

“This tree in the yard - the tree that men chopped down… this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump - this tree lived!
It lived! And nothing could destroy it.”

What a message of enduring hope for us all.

Sharing this space with you all this summer has been something that has grounded, lifted, and delighted me. Thank you for being here, for supporting me, for engaging in conversation, and for all of the other ways you’ve shown love to my family. I’m really excited about what’s to come for Viriditas, and it’s a joy to have your company along the way.