{"id":6734,"date":"2022-10-25T14:43:12","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T14:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=6734"},"modified":"2022-10-26T15:24:26","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T15:24:26","slug":"works-of-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/25\/works-of-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"Works of Mercy"},"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

Moment by Moment, Day by Day<\/h2>\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

Sally Thomas\u2019s debut novel lovingly shows the small mercies that lead to our constant rebirth.<\/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

Review by Aarik Danielsen<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/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

In our human weakness, we cross thresholds, curve our bodies around corners, even try walking through walls\u2014all to avoid bumping into the Bible\u2019s twinned rhetorical questions: Am I my brother\u2019s keeper? Who is my neighbor? <\/em>Only the questions aren\u2019t really rhetorical. Answers come in crescendo. Yes, absolutely you are. Anyone and everyone\u2014especially the person you least expect. <\/em><\/p>

Kirsty Sain discovers anyone means anyone across the pages of Sally Thomas\u2019s Works of Mercy. <\/em>A green priest who thrives inside the confessional but falters when looking God\u2019s people in the eye; a cheerfully oblivious family with an indeterminate number of children; an alien, eyeless creature posing as a cat\u2014all make an unwitting neighbor of Kirsty. In their presence, she stumbles upon the unrealized meaning of Jesus\u2019 second commandment, learning to love her neighbor and<\/em> herself.<\/p>

In her debut novel, Thomas\u2014an esteemed poet and fiction writer\u2014benevolently balances scenes from Kirsty\u2019s past and present, portraying her across time as a complete woman yet not fully grown. Migrating from her native Shetland Islands to the North Carolina Piedmont, Kirsty roams her interior plot of heartland, beginning life as a promising young Mary before giving into the Martha tidying up within. We meet her in this sentence: \u201cOn Mondays I cleaned the rectory for the good of my soul.\u201d<\/p>

Certain virtues naturally attend this rite. Kirsty sees beauty in the swirling blue of a cleaning agent; describes the humble rectory as if recounting the splendor of Solomon\u2019s temple; attains something like self-worth and senses intimacy through her appointed task. A lesser pen might write Kirsty as small, retiring, pathetic even. Thomas never welcomes the temptation; Kirsty might be holy or she might be full of holes, to borrow from the late songwriter Scott Hutchison\u2014but she knows who she is.<\/p>

Kirsty recalls a conversation with her late husband; hearing her express interest in loneliness (\u201cwhat I\u2019d meant… was that I\u2019d rather long for human companionship than have it,\u201d she remembers), he insists upon the impossibility of craving \u201ca negative.\u201d Ever headstrong, Kirsty proves him wrong, gathering years of evidence. \u201cI was happy, or something like it,\u201d Thomas writes early in the book. \u201cAll my life I had lived among people. Now, although perhaps my days sound dull, I was well enough satisfied with my own company.\u201d<\/p>

Where one sense declines, others heighten. Kirsty\u2019s chosen aloofness co-exists with quiet rapture, experienced as her gaze turns to the outside world. She notices in poems. Moving from duty to duty, she spies \u201cbuckets of cellophane-wrapped flowers and knobbled stalks of Brussels sprouts, set outside shop doors to be rained upon\u201d; knows \u201crosy clarity in the western sky, crickets holding their one thin unison note\u201d; feels \u201cthe rain, real as real\u201d silently stab her face; entertains a sensory memory forwarded from home, of \u201cthe long cold golden dusk of the northern springtime.\u201d<\/p>

And in two breathtaking sentences, sentences worth stilling your anxious mind to behold, Thomas looks through her eyes to sketch the Piedmont\u2019s God-given geometry: \u201cAt the edge of this ocean, to the west, the mountains hung like low blue clouds. Above them, real clouds, cumulus thunderheads, were piling like darker, more substantial mountains.\u201d<\/p>

Kirsty\u2019s trouble, then, lies close to the heart of my own (and perhaps yours): an almost burdensome wonder upon stepping into God\u2019s theater, silos of faith reserved for other people spent on past famines, and too rarely replenished. In my case, palpitations arrive when minding the gap between who we are\u2014who I am\u2014and might yet be.<\/p>

For Kirsty, life\u2019s losses carve safe distance between her and others. The loss of her husband, a loss visited upon her decades earlier by a predatory teacher, and a third loss we learn of as the pages process, all linger, ultimately sapping her self-love. \u201cI was haunted by my own share of ghosts… even the ghost of myself returned to me, that silly girl so fleetingly, foolishly happy,\u201d she thinks.<\/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\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

A second birth is too small and simple a miracle for this God; we are forever being converted, born again every moment.<\/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

Something like tolerance forbids Kirsty from fully excusing herself from the timid young priest, the Malkin family, or her strange new feline housemate. In a series of houses\u2014theirs, hers, and the Lord\u2019s\u2014a God who moves in mysterious ways redeems her one property at a time. A second birth is too small and simple a miracle for this God; we are forever being converted, born again every moment, Kirsty\u2019s life displays. If he is able to make wine from water, then converting her tolerance to true affection, her pious chores into acts of love, is not only possible but by design. Echoing John 6, she learns the disciple\u2019s true work is to believe in the author of small, aftershock salvations and revel in his peculiar wonders. \u201cIt was a vocation, I thought, to be sent into the world to marvel at its strangeness,\u201d Kirsty thinks. \u201cOne could make a whole life of such work.\u201d<\/p>

Works of Mercy <\/em>belongs beside the novels of Niall Williams and titles like Claire Keegan\u2019s Small Things Like These<\/em>. These books are quietly astonishing and astonished, unusually soulful, and, oh, they are good. Good the way wine passing the lips is good; good the way a silent snow is good; good the way an answered prayer is good.<\/p>

Thomas\u2019 economy and clarity as a writer are particular marvels. She never wastes a word, but seems to finish their meaning. Where some would spend paragraphs, even pages, on an epiphany, Thomas writes, \u201cRain struck the window. Everything was beginning.\u201d And all is understood.<\/p>

Works of Mercy <\/em>also yields proverbs, whole within the story yet worthy in any hearing. \u201cI have come to believe that we pray not only without ceasing, but without meaning to,\u201d Kirsty thinks in one moment. And what might our world be, if we ascribed to her theology of spiritual formation: \u201cTo admonish the sinner is one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy, but I had never had much taste for that. The best I could manage was to encourage the sinner when he did something right.\u201d<\/p>

Any author who takes up a character\u2019s perspective the way Thomas does Kirsty\u2019s poses a rhetorical question to her readers: Do I accept this character as my proxy? <\/em>Only, again, the question isn\u2019t really rhetorical. Traversing Works of Mercy, <\/em>one says \u201cyes\u201d over and again. Whether Kirsty begins to see others\u2014and herself\u2014as they always were, or whether the mere possibility of love radiates between souls, is up for interpretation but our view shifts with hers. \u201cWe were all being changed, every minute, without our noticing it,\u201d she thinks in the book\u2019s final pages.<\/p>

Thomas leaves Kirsty, and us, steps shy of Thomas Merton\u2019s great revelation: that we all walk around shining like the sun. But she has what she needs to enjoy everyday transfiguration, the mountaintop, and God\u2019s own children. All that\u2019s left is the bright light and eyes to see, works of mercy to be received moment by moment, day by day.<\/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\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

Aarik Danielsen<\/strong> is the arts and culture editor at the <\/em>Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri. He writes The (Dis)content, a regular column for <\/em>Fathom Magazine, and his work has appeared in <\/em>Image Journal, <\/em>Plough, <\/em>Split Lip, <\/em>Rain Taxi and <\/em>Tinderbox Poetry Journal.<\/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

Works of Mercy <\/em><\/strong>was published by Wiseblood Books on August 30, 2022. <\/em>Fare Forward thanks them for providing a copy to our reviewer. You can purchase your own copy here<\/a>. <\/em>
<\/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":"

Moment by Moment, Day by Day Sally Thomas\u2019s debut novel lovingly shows the small mercies that lead to our constant rebirth. Review by Aarik Danielsen \u00a0 In our human weakness, we cross thresholds, curve our bodies around corners, even try walking through walls\u2014all to avoid bumping into the Bible\u2019s twinned rhetorical questions: Am I my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-newsletter","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farefwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Works-of-Mercy-3D.jpg?fit=1500%2C1383&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734","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=6734"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6742,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734\/revisions\/6742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}