Religious Reading

Books read in the past year:

Hound of the Baskervilles; The Lower Quarter; News of the World; The Widow Nash; Anything Is Possible; The Hundred Year House; Wonder; Tale for the Time Being; The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley; Blame, Hillbilly Elegy; One Man’s Dark; Commonwealth; The Past; Everyone Was There; The Loss of All Lost Things; The Lola Quartet; Best American Short Stories of 2016; Enemy Women; May We Be Forgiven; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; The Pier Falls

Books abandoned :

The History of Love; Hyde; Ill Will; An Unfinished Score

I recall the precise moment that reading became something more than a pastime. I was eighteen, in my first year at the University of Georgia, an honors student, a fact I was proud of. Honors students were the smart kids, I thought, kids who would be in private school if their parents could afford it.

I changed majors three times in two weeks, landing in Honors English 101: Introduction to Literature. The professor’s hair had deep comb tracks, the result of the generous use of what, bacon fat? Dandruff dusted his hunched shoulders. He wore, without irony, horn rimmed glasses and polyester pants. Spitballs formed between his upper and lower lips when he spoke. Most of the time I didn’t know what he was talking about. He critiqued a Flannery O’Connor story and my hand shot up, ready with what would become my most-often asked English class question: “You mean the author did this on purpose? She was intentionally illustrating the doomed nature of all mankind? Isn’t it just a story about a bible salesman?”

My first paper earned a D. Mortified, I asked a smart boy I’d just met if he knew about English papers. He did. We sat in the lobby of my high rise dorm one night and he went over my work paragraph by paragraph, explaining how I might put my argument here, in the first paragraph. Then he rearranged my second and third. Suddenly my words expressed ideas, organized ideas. With a point. Though I made A’s in high school English, I had never been edited. I hadn’t given much thought to analysis. I loved to read, but until that night, watching that alchemy take place, reading had not been directly linked to writing.

My English professor put us in groups of three and assigned us a poem to explicate. I was a in group with Benji, a funny, dark-eyed boy with great skin, and J.D, a puffy white boy with brown hair who rarely spoke. Unlike the rest at the seminar table, J.D. kept his text and notebook resting on his lap, knees folded tightly with his feet twisted around the chair legs.

Our group’s assigned poem was “The Day Zimmer Lost Religion” by Paul Zimmer. Benji and I chattered, trying to come up with something appropriately intelligent to say. The poem seemed straightforward enough, in first person. The images were plain. We lobbed out idea after idea, reading multiple stanzas aloud, but we weren’t getting anywhere. The thing might have been in Sanskrit. Benji clearly didn’t care, cracking wise, making me laugh. As time grew short we became increasingly anxious; we were honors kids and could not, under any circumstances, appear stupid.

Time was called and we had nothing. Benji tittered. I felt my face heat up as I stared at the linoleum. I was about to confess that we hadn’t come up with any actual ideas when JD lifted his head and said more than he had all semester. His voice was soft; the room grew quiet. He mostly looked at our professor as he read from the last stanza and said, “To me this is the moment the speaker loses his religion, but finds faith.”

With a short, dry laugh, Benji nodded in agreement but I sat stock still, my jaw hanging open like an idiot. J. D. was obviously smarter than I was. And he was right. As soon as he said it the poem fell into place for me. Brilliant! The powerful repetition for emphasis. The dancing rhythm of the thing, the way the poet names himself then side-steps his own meaning, drawing the reader closer and closer to the beautiful truth found in the awareness of the vast difference between religion and faith.

His analysis felt so effortless. I had no idea thoughtful, careful reading could lead to such incisive observation. My mind was blown. Chubby J.D. shuffled down the hall after class, off to lunch at Snelling dining hall, while I stepped into the crisp fall afternoon, frightened, elated, ready to get started.

 

The Day Zimmer Lost Religion

by Paul Zimmer

The first Sunday I missed Mass on purpose
I waited all day for Christ to climb down
Like a wiry flyweight from the cross and
Club me on my irreverent teeth, to wade into
My blasphemous gut and drop me like a
Red hot thurble, the devil roaring in
Reserved seats until he got the hiccups.

It was a long cold way from the old days
When cassocked and surpliced I mumbled Latin
At the old priest and rang his obscure bell.
A long way from the dirty wind that blew
The soot like venial sins across the school yard
Where God reigned as a threatening,
One-eyed triangle high in the fleecy sky.

The first Sunday I missed Mass on purpose
I waited all day for Christ to climb down
Like the playground bully, the cuts and mice
Upon his face agleam, and pound me
Till my irreligious tongue hung out.
But of course He never came, knowing that
I was grown up and ready for Him now.