Episode 18: Books! Reading Ourselves Sane
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations.
Patsy: And we’re about to cross a bridge, a bridge called The Great American Read, because we’re looking at their list and comparing it to some of the books we’ve read. Books are important in our life.
Andrew: They’re extremely important. If this show is about building bridges, one of the greatest bridges that has been built over and over in my life is the passageway of books, of learning new things, of understanding new perspectives, of really discovering some new things about myself has come through reading.
And there are some titles on here that you would expect might be on the top of Americans’ list of their favorite books and some that are fairly surprising. We want to explore some of both, and we’re looking forward to exploring those with you.
“One of the greatest bridges that has been built over and over in my life is the passageway of books.”
Patsy: I love being a page turner with you, Andrew, because we’ve shared a lot in the way of books and our thoughts in regard to them, and it’s stirred up a lot of great conversation. So please join us today.
Andrew: I’ve got a bridge for you, Patsy. I don’t want to play off your fears, but this bridge has the longest sea crossing. It has an undersea tunnel.
Patsy: No, no. No. No undersea for me. I don’t do high in the sky or low in the earth. Anything else I’m game for.
Andrew: The rest of the bridge, apparently, is suspended by cables, so I guess…
Patsy: Huh uh. Not heavy enough, not thick enough.
Andrew: Well, this bridge is in Hong Kong. Would you like to pronounce it?
Patsy: Uh, no. I look at that name, and I think it’s a gift for you today.
Andrew: So in Japan, there is the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macau bridge, and again, it has many facets to it. It’s an incredible, breath-taking bridge that draws people from all over all year long but also is a practical bridge, a way to get from one side to the other.
One of the things that it does that has been so helpful for people in Hong Kong is it has made it a shortcut from one side to the other. I’m not sure of all the details, but somehow it has shortened the route for people from four hours to 45 minutes.
Patsy: That is a shortcut.
Andrew: I’d say so. And we need as many of those as possible, but one of our favorite shortcuts, or one of our favorite maybe not shortcuts but bridges, would be books.
Patsy: Oh, books are so important to my life, and I know you too, Andrew, love books. We both have extensive libraries that we’re always having to thin out a little to make room for the new volumes.
But books became, really, the bridge to my healing, the bridge to my sanity. God used the books of other people, first his book, his living words, and then the words of others who had journeyed in this life through hardship and were giving hope by sharing their story. And I connected into that. That became really important to me.
I wasn’t getting out of my home as an agoraphobic, physically and emotionally housebound. I wasn’t able to get out of my home, but people were coming in and, after dealing with me for just minutes, went home and got me books. It was easier to give me a book than to know what to do with me.
Andrew: Here’s some friends.
Patsy: Yeah. Here, relate with them.
And I developed a ferocious appetite for the printed word, and I read everything in all my friends’ libraries. And when I ran out, I started my own little bookstore inside my home. It was called God’s Garden of Bibles and Books, and what I did is I read them all before I sold them. Now, you can’t be eating breakfast while you’re doing that because then you get egg and peanut butter all over them, and that doesn’t work for selling.
So I was able to read them, and then when customers come into my home, if they told me, “We’re struggling in our marriage,” or “I’m struggling with emotions,” I could tell them which book could be of help for that problem. Well, my enthusiasm for the printed word kind of was infectious evidently because people came back and said, “We wish you would bring your books to our ladies’ event and tell our women about them.”
So I eventually became known as God’s Little Bookie, as I was constantly bringing in boxes of books and jumping up and down with great enthusiasm about the latest one I’d read and what it could offer. And I didn’t know at that point that God was using the books, not only for my healing and the health of my mind and for me to share with others, but he was opening up the platform to a very broken person. And I would have never ventured there if it had not been first that I began presenting book reviews. Later, I would begin sharing in workshops, and even later, I would become a main speaker.
So it was not a fast journey but a very deliberate journey as far as what God’s plans were. It wasn’t deliberate by me because I always thought every time I spoke, This is the last time I’ll ever do this. I am so insecure, and I have no business being up here. And then I found out that God uses cracked pots, which became my first offering on the marketplace when Focus On The Family contacted me and asked me if I’d like to be in print. And I thought, Do they know what they’re saying? But gratefully, it worked for people, and that blessed me.
Andrew: I think of that pathway from being housebound essentially, the boundaries of your home, and books opening up a new world within the confines of... It seemed like your mind and your spirit were only allowing you to go so far from your home, at first not outside your home. The books gave you a new kind of boundless terrain to explore.
A lot of people go to books to escape their reality in the moment, and I don’t think that’s a terrible thing at all times. Do you?
Patsy: Oh, no. I think it’s good for us because let’s take fiction for instance. Let’s take novels. They can take you places you’ve never been to teach you things you hadn’t even realized you were learning because you were reading about some fictitious character, and suddenly, it became very personal for you.
So I think we can learn in all sorts of environments, but even if we’re just there to bask in the delight of a wonderfully told tale, that’s an amazing gift.
Andrew: There’s a lot of wonderful tales that have been told throughout the history of the world of course, but even more recently, I think it’s been fascinating. I think it’s proving what you’re saying, that we are so interested, culturally we’ve always been interested, in books and always interested in the telling of story.
Proof of that, I think, is the popularity, and maybe the surprising popularity of PBS’ The Great American Read, which they hosted recently. The whole idea of that was to celebrate different books that have impacted our lives in different ways.
Patsy: Yes, and then people could vote. Every single day you could vote one time for one book on this list that was compiled by asking people their favorite reads of their life. And so they compiled this list and people began voting, and it was interesting because the one that won went to the top immediately and never moved from that position. Many of the others shifted places many times. They’d be No. 2, then they’d be No. 6, and then 16 and back up to 8. But No. 1 rushed up to the top and became the real estate that everybody wished they could get to, and no one could attain to it.
Andrew: What was that book?
Patsy: Oh, have I built some suspense? I hope, I hope, I hope.
It is To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s a book that on every top 100 list I’ve ever seen is always right near the top, if not the top. On this particular vote, it was the No. 1 read of our nation.
Andrew: I think that’s interesting if you think about the content of To Kill A Mockingbird. Of course, part of that is it’s a very well exposed book. It’s required reading for a lot of students and has been for years. But the content for me makes it interesting.
I mean, books are kind of telling in some ways about what we prize in our lives, what’s important to us, what we resonate with most in the very deepest parts of us. And To Kill A Mockingbird, if you think about the messages of that book, I think it’s a promising No. 1.
Patsy: I’m encouraged that our nation voted that No. 1. I wasn’t as encouraged with some of the other ones on the long list. Although, there were a number of them that I delighted in. So like No. 11. No. 11 was Anne of Green Gables. That made me so happy that it made it that high on the list because I am an Anne fan, and I am an L.M. Montgomery, the author, I’m a fan of hers.
Her life was hard, it was hurtful, and in the midst of great loss and sadness, she found these characters that helped her survive her pain and gave her some purpose, a purpose far beyond what she could’ve imagined, that that book would literally travel around the globe.
When I went to Prince Edward Island, I found out there was a one-year wait in Japan to be able to get a flight there because it was required reading in their school system.
Andrew: In Japan?
Patsy: In Japan. Their children had grown up loving it, and many by the time they got the age of marriage wanted to be married there. And so they made the journey over for their wedding. Isn’t that amazing?
Andrew: Oh, it’s amazing, and it’s strange. When I think of the setting of Anne of Green Gables, the first thing I think of is not necessarily resonating in the hearts of the Japanese. How do I know? I’ve never read it actually.
Patsy: I’m so sorry you said that out loud because people will wonder about you now. I want you to go right home and read it.
Andrew: I’ll do my best.
Patsy: What it is about is a child who couldn’t find where she belonged and longed for acceptance and love. Who doesn’t get that message?
Andrew: Patsy, I hear that you have a book club.
Patsy: I do. Books are what God used to help heal me, so it delights me to offer that service to others, that they could sign up, anybody. All y’alls, come on in. We want you to join in the book club, and we will read ourselves silly and sane. We’ll have different selections, one every month with a bonus. You can check it out: patsyclairmont.com. And also on that page, you’ll see that I do cheerleading for people. I coach them in helping them stir up their creativity to tell their story. But here’s what I know: You’re into a different kind of storytelling, and you’ve been set up to win awards for what you’ve done.
Andrew: I love music, and I have a new record out called Tune My Heart, and it includes some of my really close friends, some of your friends, like Sandra McCracken and Cindy Morgan and Buddy Greene. And you can find that record anywhere you stream or download, or at andrew-greer.com. You know what else, Patsy?
Patsy: What?
Andrew: I’ve got another podcast. It’s not my favorite podcast, but if you like listening to Bridges, then you might like listening to and viewing Dinner Conversations with our pal Mark Lowry and myself. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Prime, or simply go to dinner-conversations.com.
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Patsy: We’d love to sit down, Andrew and I, with each one of you and have a meal and a conversation. That’s not possible, but because of this contest, it is possible for us to sit down with someone and their friend.
Andrew: That’s right. For every one of you who purchase a chicken to help families in need through our friends at Food for the Hungry, you will be entered into our Bridges Flyaway Giveaway, where one lucky winner and their friend will be able to fly in to Franklin, Tennessee, have dinner with us, and explore our quaint hometown.
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Andrew: Well, you are listening to Bridges, and we are talking with each other. I’m Andrew Greer, the Millennial, and you are…
Patsy: Patsy Clairmont
Andrew: The Boomer.
Patsy: The Boom-Boom-Boomer.
Andrew: I’ll remind them if you don’t want to.
But we’re talking about books. We have a great love for books, an affinity for books, and that is not unique to us. There are many, many people who love books. We’re talking about PBS’ The Great American Read and how this kind of opened us up to remember how loved books are in our very digital culture and age.
There are so many books on this list, but we were especially interested, as we read down, to see what kind of spiritual marks were made in the list of books. There are titles that many of you will recognize, like Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, The Da Vinci Code, of course C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. The Chronicles of Narnia is No. 10 I believe, or actually No. 9, so way up there on the list.
But also one that was very intriguing for both of us was Paul Young’s The Shack, which in spiritual worlds and in our church world, of course it comes from a Christian perspective — it talks about God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, trinity ideas — but was a controversial book when it first came out about 10 years ago.
Patsy: Yeah. I love Paul Young. I love the expansiveness of his creativity, but it’s a very purposed creativity. He knew exactly where he was taking this for the purposes of expanding our understanding of who God is.
And I am a big fan of the book, and one of the reasons is because when my friend Carol was dying of cancer, that book became her bridge of her troubled water, the bridge between life here and heaven. And so I’m deeply grateful when anyone can write something that helps someone make their journey in such a way that it lifts everybody’s heart.
I would stop by her home. She would have that book laid right across her chest and just be eyes full of tears out of gratitude. So he really spoke life to her at a time when her life was ending.
Andrew: You know, my mom first… Well, we had both heard about the book. Of course, it was such a huge success in that it was being talked about everywhere. And my mom said, “I know this is popular and I’m kind of interested in it, but you go read it first.” She told me to go read it first and tell her if it was worth reading or not.
And I’m one, as you know, to not necessarily… I’m not an early buy-in with things that are popular. I kind of want to let it test itself a little bit and see if it stands for a little longer than the fad for the moment, and then maybe I’ll buy into it.
Well, of course, if my mom asked, I’m fine to do that. And I also like assignments, so that was easy.
So I read it, and I was so inspired — and inspired’s even the wrong word, compelled. I was really compelled by how the author depicted God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They were so diverse in their depictions as far as I really thought it kind of tapped into the scope of humanity. We know that we are created as reflections of God. We are created in the image of God. To think about all the people across the world and how they are somehow, how we all are somehow, a reflection of God, he began to really, I think, scratch the surface of how that could be, and it spoke to me.
Of course, I love diversity. You know that. I grew up wanting to be a Black gospel artist, and that’s not possible because I’m a Caucasian man and I only have so much soul to go around. But I love the visual of diversity. I love to see different people from different places.
Patsy: Paul got a lot of criticism from some groups, but I think it’s very scary for some of us to step out of preconceived ideas and we don’t know how to let the walls come down far enough that we can see, begin to just scratch the surface of, how great our God is and how all-encompassing he is. We want to keep him in a smaller package that feels like we’ve got some say-so in it all, and he wants us to really start to get a hold of his greatness.
Andrew: I wonder where that fear stems from. Why am I afraid of God being so big?
Patsy: Well, because it goes beyond our ability to keep him kind of constrained in our thoughts. We want to be able to present him as we know him, and that's a smaller package, rather than present him by who he actually is. And I think Paul was helping to knock down some walls there, and I think he did that successfully for many.
You mentioned your mom, and I know something about the two of you I’d like you to tell the audience, and that is your reading tradition.
Andrew: That’s right. Around the holidays, around the Christmas holidays, and while many people have Christmas traditions with each other, especially family members, I think ours is unique, because when I was in high school, I remember finding a book that my mom was reading around the holidays, based around the holidays, short stories of mysteries around murder. In fact, the book was called Murder for Christmas, and so now every Christmas we share a book title. I usually send her one from Amazon or she sends me one that is about some kind of mysterious murder for Christmas.
But my mom loves books and really probably instilled in me the love of reading books. In fact, she has made the full transition — she still reads physical copies of books, but she is happy with her Kindle.
Patsy: Yes, the Kindle is a great way to read. Also, Audible books are great. I know there are some people who don’t like to read, that the task takes too much time or it is very difficult for them visually to conceptualize all the words and phrases. And so I encourage people who are not book book readers to go and find some reader that they really enjoy on Audible and download that because there’s nothing more pleasing to a heart than having someone read you a good book who is a gifted reader. And what I love is you can listen to an excerpt and see if you like the reader before you order the book.
I don’t care how you do it; I just know that reading can open up worlds for you if you’ll just take the risk of opening up a cover, however that might be done. I have in my hand right now Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
“Reading can open up worlds for you if you’ll just take the risk of opening up a cover.”
Andrew: How astute.
Patsy: Yes. And this has been on my shelf for many, many years, and I read and reread the first paragraph because it’s so amazing. But the part that really grabs my interest is how the first three words, a very short sentence, has made the top lists for best opening statements of a book, and the words are “Call me Ishmael.” Now, tell me: Why do you think, Andrew, that’s such a huge deal for people?
Andrew: Well, it’s so endearing.
Patsy: Because?
Andrew: Well, because it’s the first line. I think when I introduce myself: “Hi, I’m Andrew. What’s your name?” And you would reciprocate most likely with, “Hi, I’m Patsy.”
There’s a certain motivation behind that. There’s an intention of wanting to get to know someone. It’s an invitation, even though it’s a very straightforward line. To me, it’s an instant invitation that I cannot wait to go past that first sentence.
And that’s pretty difficult. I can’t think of many first sentences that have motivated me in such a direct manner to continue to read. I think that’s why.
Patsy: Yes. I believe that there is a connection in the answer to that question, and the reception of it as well. “Call me Ishmael” says, This is who I am, and I offer it to you. Who are you? And in that moment, bing, connection. A bridge is built. Two people’s lives have come together. I think it’s brilliant.
Andrew: Do you think there’s a spiritual experience in reading books? You can read books that have some kind of spiritual overtones, or you can very explicitly spiritual material, material that’s articulating something about our experience with God or trying to understand God, but just reading in general. I even think of a book like Moby Dick and some of our favorite books we’ve discussed. Is there a spiritual experience in reading?
Patsy: Oh, I believe there is. I feel as though God has spoken to me through lines in books that other people have written sometimes centuries before. And so I think that the words have power and connectiveness in a spiritual dimension. So yes, I truly believe that because I’ve experienced it.
Andrew: We’ve been talking about everyone else’s favorite books on The Great American Read. What is your all-time favorite book?
Patsy: I tried to answer that, and it was like 16 books because every time one changes your life, you think, Oh, now that’s my very favorite. And so books like Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and Heidi from my childhood still rise up today as favorites. I would have to say the book of all books, which is Scripture and what it has done to give me an anchor and a hope.
Andrew: You stole my last line. I was hoping you would ask me what my favorite book is. Go ahead, ask me.
Patsy: What’s your favorite?
Andrew: The Bible. I didn’t even get it. She took my tagline, people. The Boomers have been there before the Millennials. You’ve seen and done. This is old news.
Well, you have been listening to Bridges with…
Patsy: Patsy Clairmont, the Boomer.
Andrew: And Andrew Greer. I am the Millennial, and this is all spiritual connections we are trying to make through generational conversations. Today’s conversation has been all around books, and even if you are not a reader, hopefully this conversation would inspire you to maybe peel open a cover or to get on your phone and find that Kindle app or even to have someone read to you. And if I can think of anybody in the world I would want to read to me, I echo Sheila Walsh. She said if anyone could read to her, that would be Patsy, and I have to agree with that.
Patsy: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. I love reading.
Andrew: I feel like if you read the Bible to me, it was as if I was hearing directly the voice of God. Maybe not.
Patsy: Maybe not is right.
Andrew: We’ll see you next time on Bridges.
Patsy: Bridges is co-produced by Andrew Greer and myself, Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: And our podcast is recorded and mixed by Jesse Phillips at the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee.
Patsy: Remember, don’t forget to leave us a rating, a review, or a comment. It all helps our little show get going.
Andrew: To find out more about my co-host Patsy Clairmont or myself, Andrew Greer, or to read transcripts of our show, simply go to bridgesshow.com.