WOMAN with SPIRITS

I belong to a two-person, long-distance, by-telephone book club with my good friend. We "meet" on Friday mornings to discuss books and their religious import and theological relevance. Together we choose books that both of us are open to reading and set up a schedule so that we can give adequate attention to our selections and time to properly digest their contents.

Our two most recent reads were Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans and Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. by Lenny Duncan. Our new read was a bit of a departure, being less direct in its subject material and mostly unknown. We just started The Long Weeping: Portrait Essays by Jessie van Eerden.

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In our first meeting we discussed the brief "Prologue," (a portrait essay in its own right, and originally published in Appalachian Heritage as "The Long Weeping"), and the first proper essay, "Woman with Spirits | Eliza." In addition to the rich, dense, chewy, and impressionistic language of the "Woman with Spirits," the essay called forth many echoes for me—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna (all women with spirits healed by Jesus, and subsequently become his followers/disciples) in Luke 8:2-3, who will later appear as witnesses to the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus; the short stories of Flannery O'Connor; Poor People by William T. Vollmann; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. For me, these echoes reinforce the three (or perhaps four) themes and stories that van Eerden meticulously weaves together into a seamless narrative that has its own bright light and life.

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Both my reading partner and I ended up reading the essay more than once. This is because there is so much invested in each word, each phrase, each sentence, each paragraph that a second reading allowed me to "step back" and see the "entire painting" that van Eerden had placed upon the page. The first reading, I believe I was spending my time looking at individual "brushstrokes" and mistook the forest for the trees. A second reading allowed me a more comprehensive understanding of what she was doing in the essay, to see all of the beautiful passages and threads as a magnificent whole.

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I'm actually not quite sure how to describe what I read to someone who hasn't read it. It was helpful to be in conversation with someone else who read the essay because we could share our confusion and our wonder at what we had ingested.

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There are eleven more essays and eleven more Fridays of discussion, as we read one essay per week in order to give each piece proper and necessary attention. I'm looking forward to each and every week of reading and each and every Friday of conversation.