{"id":1117,"date":"2020-09-30T17:26:16","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T17:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2020-12-30T18:37:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T18:37:05","slug":"the-life-of-perished-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/30\/the-life-of-perished-things\/","title":{"rendered":"The Life of Perished Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Reflections on Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping<\/em> forty years after its release.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

By Joshua Rio-Ross
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

I\u00a0moved to the desert when I was thirteen. My mother had raised me in western Washington state from the age of five, and when she died, I left the salt-licked fogs of Mukilteo Beach for the sun-dusted high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The beauty of this place, enchanting though it was, eluded me for years. The desert was my topography of grief.<\/p>

My grandparents, to whom I was sent, had used their house for a homeless ministry for twenty years. I moved in with the remaining five men who had yet to marry or leave for jobs or choose a life of transience over life among “housed people,\u201d as one man called them. He slept in a tent slightly away from the house. But we all woke to the same desert, the same mountains, and the same apricot tree in the center of the property. I therefore joined a community of shared homelessness, not because we didn\u2019t have somewhere to sleep, but because the concept of “home\u201d had by various means perished for each of us. I also joined, for the first time in my life, a community of faith\u2014a Christian community. Suddenly my life had a religious rhythm, with Bible studies, church, potluck dinners, and prayer and worship nights. And so my grief, my life in the desert, was confronted at every turn with questions of faith, leading to the conviction that if the Christian faith is anything else, it must be a meaningful confrontation with death and the stories it ends.<\/p>

This Lent, I read St. John of the Cross\u2019s The Ascent of Mount Carmel<\/em> and The Dark Night of the Soul<\/em>. Soon after, during Pentecost, I read Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Housekeeping<\/em>. Reading those works returned me to my homeless (but housed) <\/em>years in Santa Fe when I was trying to make sense of Christian discipline, grief, and the audacity of joy promised in the resurrection.<\/p>

With his ascetic flair, John of the Cross did his work, convincing me that human flourishing looks too strange to recognize when it is before us and, more frighteningly, when we inhabit it. He convinced me while still leaving me disappointed, because the ascetics tend to write only for monks, leaving the question of whether Christians can truly live in-but-not-of the world, and because the language of ascetics is so dependent upon the language of death but so reticent about the language of rising. I\u2019ve never been able to make sense of Christian spiritualities that call us to live God\u2019s life while framing our nature as an inhibition to it. What a strange salvation to offer: one annihilation for another. And what a strange travesty to make of Christ\u2019s resurrection, as though his body really were stolen from the tomb, and each of our histories along with it.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The issue, it turns out, is not just whether the mystic can live faithfully in the world, but whether the world will allow the mystical life to invert its sacred touchstones: the nuclear family, the house with warm lights and closed doors, the garden whose wildness is always trimmed and tamed.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Once I started Robinson\u2019s Housekeeping<\/em>, I quickly found that I\u2019d not left the mystical genre. Central to Housekeeping<\/em> is, as with any mystical writing, death and the ways in which death itself fails at permanence. In this latter sense, Housekeeping<\/em> is a ghost story\u2014a ghost etiology, specifically\u2014where both life and death are equally haunted by one another.<\/p>

Ruth\u2019s orphan mysticism is an inner life chastened like those of the ascetics but residing in the common world. Ruth\u2019s flesh and desires and intellect are all mortified in ways that comport with John of the Cross\u2019s mystical path, though her mortification is born out of grief and formed through her aunt Sylvie\u2019s mystical direction. Turned out of any reliable sense of home, Ruth is content with Sylvie\u2019s outside-in form of housekeeping, despite, if not because of, the lights off at dinner and the open air and the leaves gathered in the corners. Sylvie\u2019s house is enlivened to what\u2019s lost and hoped for. Ruth tells us, \u201cIt seemed to me that what perished need not also be lost. At Sylvie\u2019s house, my grandmother\u2019s house, so much of what I remembered I could hold in my hand\u2014like a china cup, or a windfall apple, sour and cold from its affinity with deep earth, with only a trace of the perfume of its blossoming. Sylvie, I knew, felt the life of perished things.\u201d<\/p>

As Ruth learns to feel the life of perished things, she lives through both nights that John of the Cross outlines, the night of the flesh and the night of the soul. When she\u2019s playfully hiding from Sylvie in the orchard, Ruth learns \u201cthat if you do not resist the cold, but simply relax and accept it, you no longer feel the cold as discomfort . . . I was hungry enough to begin to learn that hunger has its pleasures, and I was happily at ease in the dark, and in general, I could feel that I was breaking the tethers of need one by one.\u201d Ruth comes to terms with fundamental human loneliness (cold) and ignorance (dark) and need (hunger)\u2014and just as she does so, the sheriff arrives as swiftly and placatingly as Judas in Gethsemane, inviting Ruth back to his home.<\/p>

The sheriff\u2019s attempt to take Ruth from Sylvie offers a glimpse into what\u2019s at stake for a mystical life in the world<\/em> rather than removed to a monastic distance. The issue, it turns out, is not just whether the mystic can live faithfully in the world, but whether the world will allow the mystical life to invert its sacred touchstones: the nuclear family, the house with warm lights and closed doors, the garden whose wildness is always trimmed and tamed. Sylvie\u2019s outside-in housekeeping constitutes a threat to the safe household. The dead wandering the streets can be locked out. The dead wandering a house, even their own house, mean any house can just as soon be inverted into a temple too wild\u2014too alive with perished things\u2014for the appearances of safety and order to withstand.<\/p>

Housekeeping<\/em> warns us that though the mystic might not need a monastery to live her life, she will be turned out of house and home, cast out to haunt the world that must decide whether to treat her as a ghost or a prophet. Ruth explains that Fingerbone viewed transients as \u201cghosts, terrifying as ghosts are because they were not very different from us.\u201d In this sense my grandparents, too, were ghosts, along with the men they took in. Their homeless ministry didn\u2019t begin in New Mexico. They\u2019d originally lived in an affluent neighborhood in Santa Barbara, California, where they had dinners and prayer meetings on the beach. Eventually, my grandparent\u2019s neighbors applied increasing pressure for them to leave because they invited unwelcome men to stay in their house, a house identical to the others in the HOA. My grandparents invited hauntings of another world to their table, and their neighbors cast them out to the desert for it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Emptying memory wasn\u2019t an option. What was an option\u2014what I found was my only option\u2014was making my memory an offering, and myself with it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Housekeeping<\/em> also offers an alternative vision for what role memory plays for the mystic. Ruth refuses to empty her memory to take up hope; instead, memory functions as her site of hope, a means of living sacramentally in but not of the world, because memory allows one to believe in the resurrection of someone<\/em>. And that conviction allows Ruth to receive grace through<\/em> memory, since memory moves her to live life toward the resurrection, just as remembering Christ in the Eucharist is a foretaste of the Kingdom and sends us forth to seek the Kingdom in the present.<\/p>

My grandmother lost her daughter of forty-one years. Could she really look to the desert hills for Christ\u2019s returning and not look for her firstborn? In those early years after my mother\u2019s death, every newness forced upon me was a confrontation with memory and the world\u2019s ghosts. Emptying memory wasn\u2019t an option. What was an option\u2014what I found was my only option\u2014was making my memory an offering, and myself with it. Ruth says, “The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted. That is why the first event is known to have been expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. So memory pulls us forward, so prophecy is only brilliant memory.\u201d <\/p>

About a decade after I moved out of my grandparents\u2019 house in the desert, after all the homeless men had left, a gas leak caught fire and burned down the main structure. My grandparents were transient for two-and-a-half years. They moved from rental homes to campers to, finally, the room above the garage\u2014the room where we used to hold our prayer meetings. And while the house could be rebuilt, the photos of my mother and the table where they took in our homeless community went up in flames, transfigured to desert dust. Even the apricot tree outside my old window was incinerated. What remains now are the Sangre de Christo hills, turned red at sunset as light refracts off the dust, and those same songs my grandparents taught us adrift on the wind on Sunday evenings.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Per-Ole<\/em> Lind <\/em><\/strong>provided original illustrations for this article. He is <\/em>Fare Forward‘s Art Director. Per-Ole works at the Swiss L\u2019Abri and is a member of the L\u2019Abri international fellowship. He has 25 years design experience with a art directing magazines from underground to customer relation media. See more here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Joshua Rio-Ross<\/strong> studied Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School. He is an assistant professor of mathematics in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lives with his poet wife and philosopher pup. He plays fantasy football with math; he swing dances with his wife; he and his dog just are.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joshua Rio-Ross. Reflections on Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping forty years after its release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,10,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","category-essays","category-issue-9","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farefwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Tree-mountains-HR.png?fit=1708%2C893&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1265,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/1265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}