Book Review: The Year of Small Things

[osprey_archer]

I have been struggling for the past few days to write a review of Sarah Arthur & Erin Wasinger’s The Year of Small Things: Radical Faith for the Rest of Us, because I really liked the book - enough that I am thinking of getting a paper copy, even though I’ve already got it on my Kindle from Netgalley - but I can’t seem to find the right approach to get started.

Partly this is because there’s just so much here that one could talk about. Do I start with the idea of New Monasticism, which I had never heard of before this book, and which so intrigued me that I’ve cribbed a list of further reading from The Year of Small Things?

Or how about the critique of self-help, and not just self-help but self-reliance as a concept? The idea that we should be able to help ourselves, all on our own, with no help from the outside but a paperback, only digs us deeper into the kind of self-centered isolation that is often the problem we need help with in the first place. We try to help ourselves and wonder why it doesn’t work when we’re tackling the wrong problem - because the right one is the lack of community, which by definition we can’t change on our own.

Have you shared with anyone your hopes, your longings? Could you be so vulnerable? Because in being this boldly honest, we’re moving beyond ‘support’ as a euphemism for benign interest and into physically feeling the weight of burdens and the weightlessness of one another’s joys - truly supporting each other.

The book has two authors precisely to underscore this point: both families are interested in shaping their lives around the ideas of radical faith, and they make a covenant of mutual aid for this endeavor because they know that trying to go it alone will almost inevitably lead to backsliding. Radical faith is demanding.

One of the subthemes of the book, in fact, is the concern that radical faith is a sort of luxury good - it’s a demanding doctrine that attracts healthy young childless white people, who almost inevitably slip away from it as they grow older and get spouses and children and health problems and aging parents to care for etc. etc. etc. Is it possible to follow it while parenting small children (as both Arthur and Wasinger do) or having depression (as Wasinger does)?

Wasinger’s depression comes up throughout the book, and has a chapter largely devoted to it, which is refreshing: in self-help books (Christian and secular) that aren’t specifically about mental illness, often you can practically hear the tires screeching as the authors speed away from the topic. (This is especially funny because lots of self-help books give advice that would fit right into a CBT book. There’s really only so much good advice to go around in this world, I suppose.)

Wasinger made a comment about her depression that resonated with me:

When I’m at the worst of my depression, I’m alone, and I want to be left alone, but then, not.

I have the book on Kindle so I could not draw little stars in the margin and write THAT’S IT, but, nonetheless. THAT’S IT.

It strikes me that I’ve never seen loneliness or feelings of isolation on a list of depression symptoms. Maybe it’s not that common? Or maybe “feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness” are supposed to cover it.

Or another passage that stuck out to me:

Being transparent about our struggles makes us vulnerable. We’re humbled. We’re on level ground with those with whom we share life. We cannot afford to be self-reliant; we cannot pretend to be anyone’s savior. We cannot pretend to be in control; we’re ever at the mercy of God (see Ps. 37). Perhaps our broken minds or bodies are leveling grounds where those whom we are tempted to ‘serve’ instead become people with whom we see eye to eye.

The identification of service as a temptation - a disguise for the sin of pride; a thinly veiled way of proving to oneself that one is better than everyone else. That struck me.

Comments

[staranise]

Oh wow, that sounds like something I very much need to read. (I'm currently reading Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me, which treads similar ground except more as a memoir, and more narrowly focused.)

[osprey_archer]

Now I want to add Acedia and Me. No, self, no! Do not add more things to the reading list! Even if they might turn out to be very useful for the demonic possession series.

[staranise]

Acedia, after all, was the noonday demon, an evil spirit that tempted monks with the idea that everything was meaningless and nothing they did mattered.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Oh man - that last quote. I'm with you. Right in the uncomfortable truths.

I'm going to have to add this to my to-read list. I'm not familiar with New Monasticism or radical faith, and I don't know how or if either philosophy will fit in my life/worldview, but our cultural tendency towards isolation (and the selling of the "self-help" culture) is something I often lament. I tend to think that there's a certain amount you can do on your own, and self-help might be useful for that, but ultimately so many of our ills come from our determination never to be dependent on anyone else or (god forbid) vulnerable. Maybe this will make a good companion piece to Daring Greatly.

(P.S. I've been meaning to comment on something like your last ten posts, but a combination of lack of time and not wanting to be that creepy new person who comments on Every Post has held me back. But I wanted to say that I've really been enjoying your insights and thoughts - it seems like few people bother to really think about the stuff they read, and even fewer to actually write them down. You inspire me to do the same, even when it's not in Perfect Review form. Thank you.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It might make a good companion piece to Daring Greatly. There's definitely a similar emphasis on the importance of vulnerability and creating connection, although also a different attitude toward shame & guilt - less emphasis on it in the first place, and I think less of a sense that shame and guilt are inherently negative.

Don't worry about commenting too much! It's probably possible to do it, but I don't believe I've seen it done.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What you describe matches some of the things my oldest child (the tall one) has said about becoming very devout in his faith.

Because in being this boldly honest, we’re moving beyond ‘support’ as a euphemism for benign interest and into physically feeling the weight of burdens and the weightlessness of one another’s joys --I really love that: making the distinction between benign interest to a more physical, actual involvement.

That thing about radical faith as a luxury good seems somewhat off to me, though, because I hear expressions of radical faith a lot from the people I encounter in the various volunteering situations I'm in--where the people making the statements are *not* white childless well-to-do couples.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I loved the distinction between benign (but detached) interest and the weight of actual support, too.

I think the radical faith thing may be an issue of sloppy wording on my part - the concern may focus New Monasticism as a movement rather than on radical faith per se. The Arthurs' life followed a trajectory that is (according to them; this book is my only source on the subject right now) fairly common among New Monastics: they were gung-ho about New Monasticism when they were young and childless, and slipped away from it as they got older, had children, accrued responsibilities, etc.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, about New Monasticism. I hadn't heard of it before reading your post, but traditionally monasticism meant renouncing family and withdrawing from society--so I can easily imagine that having those things would make it difficult to maintain, even in whatever new form of it New Monasticism promotes.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that I’ve never seen loneliness or feelings of isolation on a list of depression symptoms. Maybe it’s not that common?

It's nearly universal in my experience. I think it's not on the list because the lists aren't necessarily that accurate to the actual experience - creating mental illness criteria is a political process, and important/real stuff gets left out. That being said, a lot of people who aren't clinically depressed feel lonely or isolated because of life circumstances, so the reasoning is probably that it's not diagnostic the way feelings of self-hatred and worthlessness are.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, that makes sense. And I suppose it's not fair to expect a list, even a comprehensive one, to be evocative of lived experience in the way that something written in longer form can be.