Stories, Q Club, Us

The photo is not by Len or me, its from I Love Canada on FB. I've seen a sky like that just once. 

11/21/2022

Last week I read two books about young people who left their homes. They experienced some good and too many rough experiences and they couldn’t go back until they figured out how to not be who they used to be. Both novels knocked my socks off.

The People You Keep by Allison Larkin

April has been living mostly on her own since she was 14. Her mom ditched their family when April was little. Her dad is a nice but incredibly irresponsible guy. He gets a new girlfriend and moves in with her, leaving April at the parked motorhome in the woods outside of town. Dad comes back to check on her fairly frequently and sometimes gives her money though never enough. She takes the bus to school where she does poorly because she does not have the wherewithal to care about geometry. A former GF of the dad provides a lot of connection and stability but still, April lives on her own.

She turns 16; circumstances happen; she steals her dad’s car and drives away. She tells folks she’s 19 and gets jobs. She loves and is loved. She writes music and plays guitar in seedy, friendly bars. She knows how to fend for herself. The story feels believable.

We identify with her because we know what it’s like to be competent while also feeling alone and scared. How does April, and how did we, learn whom to trust and whom to leave?

She can’t figure out relationships until she acknowledges how crazy and toxic her life was. She needs people but she has to see that she needs the good ones, not the ones who exploit or abandon her. Being in good relationships requires the courage to reach out to and lean on true friends. Right?

The novel ends too sweetly – her friends are way too ideal - but I recommend it anyway.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

This book is a series of short stories told from the POV of David, a Native kid of the Penobscot nation in Maine. Starts when he’s 4, ends at almost 30; the novel is not told in chronological order. It’s the particular story of a particular modern kid growing up in the function and dysfunction of modern native life in a racist society. There were times reading it was so tough I had to put the book down and go do something else. But the kicker is that many of us will identify with David’s struggle to survive his own life.

After I finished this book I thought about the Genesis story where God tells Moses to take off his shoes because he is standing on sacred ground. To me this book felt like this. Sacred ground.

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I’m an old white person and most of my “who am I?” struggles were decades ago. It surprises me when I can still be so moved by stories about young people figuring out who they are.

Do we ever get tired of these questions? Do we ever get past our astonishment at where we started and who we became? Do we really think we are “done” now?  It still feels like we are changing, right? Still looking for the people we need to stick to. Still confronting who we get to move on from. None of this is easy.  

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When I heard of the mass shooting at Q Club my first thought was simply knowing that Colorado Springs is one of the meccas (ironic Muslim word choice intended) of evangelicalism. There are more than 50 well-known and well-funded evangelical denominations and organizations headquartered there. Evangelicalism and the Air Force ARE that town.

I wonder how many of those Q Club patrons are associated with Christian groups or the military. We all know this about the military and about conservative Christianity. Who they say they are is - treacherously often - not who they are.

There’s a fight going on in our society and probably in most societies on earth right now. Is spirituality what is said - or what is lived?

April and David have to face really tough stuff as they turn away from what is easy towards what is true, just, and hard. So do we. It’s the true spiritual journey of being human.  

Happy Thanksgiving. Be kind. Look harder for justice than you do for sales.