The Givens Tree

If I may celebrate something about my life it's this: I meet great people.

Through channels God could only create, Chup and I have become friends with Terryl and Fiona Givens co-authors of The God Who Weeps and historians of the humanities and religions. In our Mormon community they have done dedicated and powerful work in putting our religious doubts in safe places by honoring them. "Be grateful for your doubts," write Terryl in his Letter to a Doubter.

 

Last week Chup and I hosted a lecture by our friends in our backyard. This was our second occasion to have Terryl lecture in our home. They are the kind of intellectuals that use words to fill your head with faith instead of fear. I really, really love them.

In Mormonism we are instructed to "read from the best books" and in her lecture Fiona talked about finding and reading books that illuminate God and self. After the lecture, a couple of my friends asked if I could request Fiona's Best Books recommendations. Graciously Fiona emailed me a list today, which I read thinking of her lovely British accent, ("I'm a huge fan of women's literature which is why it dominates...")("The Germans are a little dark.") and I thought it would be great to publish on my blog as well. So here it is.

Thank you Fiona and Terryl and Vicki and Terry for spending time with my family. And thanks for listening and changing our lives.

Fiona's Best Books:

 

Jane Austen--all

Bronte sisters--all (except for Wuthering Hights--a lot of suffering through which to tread to get to just a glimmer of redemption)

Elizabeth Gaskell--all

George Eliot--Silas Marner and Adam Bede 

Virginia Woolfe--everything except for Orlando which was a little whip-lashy

Elizabeth von Arnim--Enchanted April

Olga Gushin--The Dream Life of Sukhanov

Julian of Norwich (late 14th century visionary)--"Showings" (edited by Denise N. Baker)

J.K Rawling--the Harry Potter series

Emily Dickinson--poetry

Mariama Ba "Une si longue lettre" ( transl. "So Long a Letter")

Oscar Wilde--everything

Gerard Manley Hopkins--poetry.  Like Woolfe he paints with words.

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon--poetry.  World War I.  They've really influenced my feelings on war.  Their poetry is stunning but not pretty.

Wilkie Collins--"The Woman in White" and "Moonstone"

Victor Hugo--Les Misérables--unabridged is best but don't read Tolstoy's War and Peace unabridged unless you like to line up little toy soldiers in various battle formations during your free time.

Stendahl--The Red and the Black

Shakespeare--Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry IV Part 1, Anthony and Cleopatra are my favourites. I would definitely read these in a group and read them aloud

John Milton "Paradise Lost" (must read aloud)

Jean Anouilh--"Antigone"

Franz Kafka--The Trial, The Process and Metamorphisis (If you're in a dark going-out-there mood)

Thomas Mann--Death in Venice

Friedrich Duerrenmatt's plays

Bertholt Brecht--"The Threepenny Opera" and "Mother Courage."

In January I wrote a little bit about The God Who Weeps after I finished the book, you can read that here. Also, I love this interview with Fiona for The Mormon Women Project.

C. Jane Vlog: Father's Day 2013 Edition

I unveil my skills for penning poetry, Chup has a surprising reaction.
It's all about showing love for Father's Day!



This vlog is brought to you by these fantastic sponsors:


Buy tickets for the show here!

Hey, want to connect this weekend? I'll be around here:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Vine

Happy Father's Day Weekend!

Wanderlost

The dream of my life was to travel. I told Chup many times in and out of courtship and through the first decade of marriage, "If I can travel I will live anywhere with you. Even Idaho. Lo."

But curiously, as I have taken up a steady study of my town--the views, the discoveries, the wonder of the geography--my desire to travel lessens and lessens. My soul doesn't wait for it like a coming-of-confidence.  If I can love where I live, I can love myself and others all the more.

Does this shrink my view of the world? Not necessarily. In my pocket in Provo I have explored many global cultures by sharing experiences with my neighbors. My friend Milli from Ghana often tells me about body image ideas where she grew up ("The pear-shape is considered most beautiful.") and she's been known to leave her traditional meat kabobs (with spice so fast it melts your intestines on the quick) on my doorstep.

I do family history work for Birthe my friend from Denmark. I learn Italian from Irene. Many times I've invited myself to Simy's house for hot fare from Hong Kong. My friend Jessica just brought my girls muumuus and gummies from her hometown in Hawaii. If I'm feeling brave sometimes I will pipe up and practice my French with my neighbor Jonathan from France.

Is knowing the backdoor alley-way restaurants in Paris better than walking in to Slab pizza with all the waiting MTC-bound missionaries and their tearful mothers? You know? I don't know. I've done both and each comes with unique thrills.

Of course, if Milli ever asks if I want to go to Accra with her and eat mangos on her porch, I won't turn her down. Traveling will always excite me, I've just let go of the idea that it will complete me.

Provo completes me just fine. Thank you.


This post was brought to you by:




Going on this weekend:
You need some new threads?
There are 2 one-of-a-kind vintage and thrift sales going on this weekend in downtown Provo. 
(I will be selling some vintage dresses from my collection at both sales! Sizes 8 to 16!)


And:

On Plastics & Pools

We took our children to visit the delights of Southern California last month. We watched our feet disappear in the magic show of the washing tide. We skipped along the San Clemente pier cheering on the fisherman. And we counted those tall trees with the moppy tops, you know, "beach trees" my children called them.

We spent an entire four days in our swimming suits--in and out of blue pools and swashing sea water. I have to say that for all of its reputation of swagger and plastic body parts, Orange County has nothing on Utah County. Here in Utah County we set a sky high standard for body perfection and orange-colored-bought-in-a-bottle pseudo sexuality. Our freeway is loaded with clinics on billboards who eagerly wait to enhance, flatten or lazer-off something entirely. Given that we are the most conservative and Mormon county in the nation, it makes me sad that we obviously profess values but pay for vanity. We should know better, but we are failing awfully hard at loving ourselves in Utah County.

(In fact, given my lifelong love for this county and especially all things Provo, I feel like I can say as an insider that this place can be toxic for women. We live in a culture where it's encouraged to have lots of children. Many of us want to have lots of children, and because of the popularity of population our community does a great job of supporting big families. But that same community doesn't necessarily support our post-birthing bodies. It can feel like, Yes, have children! Lots of them! But heavens don't look like you've had them!)

Anyway, this is all to say, I found reason to love my own body in Orange County and it had nothing to do with diets, cleanses, Zumba or bronzer. Read it here.

....and speaking of Zumba, I also wrote this about exercising to love your body, not change it.

Be Generous (When Writing About People You Don't Like)

"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better." --Anne Lamott

A couple months ago I attended a lecture by the great Mormon scholar and historian Claudia Bushman about the importance of women writing their histories. If we want to have a future, we have to have a history.

After presenting her data, collections and experience of compiling an anthology of Mormon women's stories, we were allowed to ask questions. Someone in the audience asked about the ever-present conundrum of writing about people who were unkind to us--those who abused us, mistreated us, presented a bad character for the stories of our lives--what about those people? And in my world, I think about this in a public sphere--how do we write publicly about these people? Some of us still carry fear around them, and some of them are still our uncles, and some of them read our blogs.

Claudia's response was this, "Be generous."

I thought about that response. And I thought about it some more and I am still thinking about it.

Be generous. I suppose she meant, don't be overly demonizing of the antagonists of your stories. They are, after all, people. But I have also thought about flipping this idea, and saying, be generous about the truth. It seems to me, when we can look at a person's life honestly and without any blurry technique of carefully-worded manipulation, we can feel empathy for just about anyone. If you choose to write about people in your life publicly, choose to write about them truthfully. And be generous with that truth.

Truth, isn't perspective. When writing about someone, take yourself out of the character assessment and try to see them as neutral. Your perspective is tainted and you will have to own up to that. But truth considers all the factors, it consumes an entire being, it doesn't omit the good or the bad or the ugly--honesty embraces them all with balance and enlightenment. If you choose write truthfully, everyone wins. Truth makes everything illuminated and right.

And be generously truthful with yourself too.

Truth also doesn't float to the top easily. It's usually anchored, weighed down at the bottom of an ocean of human nature. So don't trust your first instinct. Dig and dig and dig before you are sure you've found the bottom. When I wrote about Page yesterday, about how she felt her worth was in her fertility, it was the result of many, many conversations about who we are as people and as sisters. When we write we are anthropologists of the soul--digging and digging until we've pieced together our personal mysteries.

Anyway, that's it: be generous. Every once and awhile stop your fingers from clacking on that keyboard and ask yourself, Am I being generous? To myself? To others? To the situation? To the scenery? To the sentiment? To the truth?


Want to discuss this more? We're on facebook today chatting about it. Join us!