A Review of Gail Godwin's Evensong
by Karen Kagiyama
(St. Andrew United Methodist Church, Carrollton, GA)
I'm
talking about the Resurrection as it applies to each of us. It means coming up through
what you were born into, then understanding objectively the people your parents
were and how they influenced you. Then finding out who you yourself are, in
terms of how you carry forward what they put in you, and how your circumstances
have shaped you. And then . . . and then . . . now here's the hard part! . . .
You have to go on to find out what you are in the human drama, or body of God.
The what beyond the who, so to speak.
--Walter Gower in Father
Melancholy's Daughter
When Margaret Gower was only six
years old, her mother went on an extended vacation with an old school friend.
She never came back. As a young adult, Margaret must learn how to move beyond
that early loss into her own identity and calling. In her earlier novel, Father
Melancholy's Daughter, Gail Godwin perceptively weaves Margaret's first
discovery of the what beyond the who into the Christian liturgical observance
of the Passion. Without Good Friday, there is no Resurrection. Yet, unlike her
father, the local Episcopal parish priest in a small Virginia town given to
bouts of deep depression, Margaret cannot live her life forever in Good Friday.
For Margaret Gower, moving beyond being Father Melancholy's daughter and the
little girl abandoned by her mother becomes the work of Resurrection and leads
to the discovery of her own calling. In the end, she finds the truth about her
father and herself that enables her to pursue the what beyond the who. The
substance of one's life is shaped and nurtured as one lives by the "grace
of daily obligation."
Evensong takes up Margaret's story a number
of years later. Like her father, Margaret Bonner has obligated herself to God
and God's people as the local parish priest of All Saints Episcopal Church in
the small North Carolina mountain town of High Balsam. Her husband, Adrian, is
the chaplain and acting headmaster at a nearby private experimental school for
troubled children. Things are on their way in the last Advent of the century
and the millennium, things both hoped for and entirely unexpected. Through
friends and strangers, Margaret and Adrian find themselves drawn into the
mystery of the past and the uncertainty of the future. Living by the grace of
daily obligation will challenge their marriage and test their vocational
commitments.
Again, Godwin sets her tale within
the framework of the church's liturgical observance, this time the four weeks
prior to Christmas called Advent. As in the church season that celebrates God's
coming, images of judgment, fire, wrath, darkness, light, death and hope dance
through the novel, teasing forth strands of memory and story. Advent stands
between the darkness of the world and the light of God's grace. The very
judgment of God upon the world prepares the world to receive God, not just in
word, but in flesh. Repentance readies the world for Incarnation. Godwin's
judgment comes in the subtle revealing of each character's story, the good and
the bad, the triumphant and the shameful. With the skill of a Jungian analyst,
she shows how each faces the task of integrating his or her story into the
larger story of God's coming. How shall they take responsibility for their past
in order to enter the future with hope? How shall they take part in the
Incarnation?
At the heart of Godwin's story is
the question of vocation, appropriately posed in the context of Advent.
"Something's one's vocation if it keeps making more of you," writes
Adrian to Margaret during an earlier time of vocational testing. How does
living by the grace of daily obligation keep making more of you? seems to be
the question with which Margaret must continue to wrestle. She must choose her
path amidst the demands of parish ministry and the stirrings of her soul that
search for the what beyond the who.
Likewise, her husband Adrian has
wrestled with his vocation. Abandoned at an orphanage, abused by adoptive
parents and spiritually seduced by his first mentor, Adrian's search finally
leads him back to an environment where he can help other troubled youth. But
does his calling extend to being headmaster and inviting Chase Zorn, one of his
most troubled students, home to live in the All Saints rectory?
The house and their lives grow
fuller and more complicated with the coming of Tony, the itinerant Benedictine
monk on a year's sabbatical in order to see the country. When Margaret
inadvertently discovers a crumpled news clipping with a picture of her and
Adrian in Tony's pocket, she wonders. Is he who he says he is? Or is there
something more sinister beneath the ordinary monk's habit that he wears with a
sense of having reached his hand into the cookie jar once too often.
Margaret has little time to ponder
Tony's identity as she deals with the other stranger who comes to town
broadcasting her purpose loud and clear. The evangelical sister on a mission,
Grace Munger, returns to High Balsam after a twenty-year absence to organize a
Millennium Birthday March for Jesus. Social and economic divisions have led to
violence, and Grace, herself saved as a child from a violent fire, announces
her calling through a full-page ad in the local newspaper, "A Christian
Manifesto for a Wounded Town." When Margaret and the people of All Saints
turn down her invitation to join the march, Grace goes all out to woo them into
line. Appropriate to her name, Grace testifies that God is on her side, has
called her to this task, and will prevail, despite the resistance of those who
sit comfortably on the sidelines.
The interplay of caricature and
depth, stereotype and surprise gives Gail Godwin's characters a real to life
quality that reminds the reader of how easy it is to live only within our
perfectly scripted roles when the world expects nothing more. That the
characters in Evensong continuously push against their prescribed
portraits challenges us to consider the possibilities in our own lives. In the
complex of relationships, roles, and responsibilities we all wonder about our
place in the larger human drama, the what beyond the who. The characters in Evensong
represent those spaces in human existence where the work of repentance, forgiveness,
mercy and blessing take place. The human drama goes on despite our human
failings, and, through the incredible grace and good timing of the Who beyond
all whats, triumphs. In God's grand scheme, it is our little lives that matter
and that make all the difference. That is the meaning of the Incarnation, and
the point of Godwin's tale.
This masterful reader of human
habits exposes the slick enticement to create a good story based on great
actions and great people. What fascinates and sustains her interest and ours is
the mirror of our own daily lives slightly tilted to reveal the shadows beneath
the surface. But shadows exist by virtue of light, and so Godwin's characters
wrestle God through the night and emerge from their painful pasts into a present
and a future graced by self-knowledge and the determination to live by their
calling. Margaret is a priest, one who blesses and heals, proclaims and prays,
standing before the people as God's representative in the world. She offers
herself through the daily obligations of her profession, her passion and
commitment illuminating even the darkest moments and making more of her and
those around her through their encounters with the mystery of the body of God.
Each part of the body, no matter how seemingly useless or inadequate, different
or ridiculous, is necessary for the well-being of the whole. Godwin
unapologetically shows us the body in full display, and trusts in the grace of
our appreciation for this gentle reflection of ourselves.
The service of Evensong marks the
end of the day, renewing mind and spirit for the coming day. Godwin's Evensong
marks the end of the millennium with both a fun-hearted poke at humanity's
insatiable quest to make all things, including God, in our own image, and a
compassionate revelation of our deepest truths and virtues that make us
incarnations of our creator. In the end, we are created in the image of the One
who made us. We are not our own, but part of the great communion of saints who
have lived and died and live anew not only by the grace of daily obligation,
but by the hope of the Word. Margaret, Adrian and their friends live through
the words of a wonderfully gifted storyteller and student of the divine-human
encounter. Their hope-filled struggles give us hope in what some see as end
times, hope that new beginnings are also upon us. In Gail Godwin's latest
vocational offering, both she and we are made more, sustained and enriched by
our encounters with the people of High Balsam.
