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Journal Entry 2 by jinnayah from Ann Arbor, Michigan USA on Friday, May 07, 2004
 I told pleasantread I'd know what to do with this book. I have a permanent copy already, so this one will be for passing on, and I think I already know to whom.
I'll read a chapter from this copy before it leaves my hands, I think. That will be Chapter XI. I read Tathea very slowly. I discovered the book over three years ago now, and here I am still less than halfway through. (And the sequel, Come Armageddon, is already out! When will I ever get to that one?) I read Tathea also out loud to my boyfriend, and also only one chapter per several months. He sometimes has asked for more, only to be told I'm just not that kind of a girl.
So why? Because of the first three chapters. Chapters 2 and 3, in particular (which I read in the UMich Graduate Library on my way home from having wings tattooed on my ankles), have a definite picaresque pattern to them which I thought could get old quickly under the wrong circumstances. I felt there was true depth to Perry's lessons, but few of us like to read merely for lessons anymore. (Who picks up Pilgrim's Progress to kill a vacant half-hour?) I wanted to enjoy Tathea's world, to experience it and learn from it, but I wanted a richness of experience which I thought could only be attained by holding back. So I wait.
That was in the first part of the book, chapters I-VI. Chapter VII takes an abrupt, and rather more theological turn, and from chapter VIII on the book is in yet a third phase. I just finished reading VII to my boyfriend, and he asked then that we take a break from this book for a while. He is a Jew, I am Episcopalian, and the book's theology is recognizably Mormon. I had not been sure how he would like it. He has never been uncomfortable discussing religion with me: indeed, he likes learning more about viewpoints he does not yet know, and he is a great fan of Orson Scott Card, who also writes as a Mormon. He said that up until the turn Perry had seemed fairly subtle to him, and he was less intrigued by the new explicitness. I can understand. I was planning to take a break myself, as well, but I want to read from this new copy.
After I had been reading to him for nine months, my boyfriend gave me my copy of Tathea as an anniversary present. But that copy doesn't quite feel mine. The GradLi's copy feels like mine. I am the only person who has ever checked it out, and I have checked it out now half a dozen times or so. That copy is hard-cover, with the same typesetting but a larger font size than this trade paperback. Up until now I have been loaning out my permanent copy and continuing to read the library's. Later today I plan to register my own copy of this book as well, though, and writing up its journal entries will make me feel more connected to it, I think. Then it will be off again to make new friends, just like this one.s
*****
I read this book, in truth, for one reason only: pages 7 and 8:
At last the woman raised her face. She was not young. There was wisdom and experience in her eyes and an unanswerable sorrow.
“You must have loved him very much,” Ta-Thea said softly.
“No,” the woman replied. “No. I wish I could say that I had, but I did not.” A smile like a ghost crossed her mouth and vanished. “Heaven forgive me, I did not even like him.” . . .
Ta-Thea stared at the woman’s face, uncomprehending. “But why do you grieve so much if you did not love him?” Surely only love could hurt this much. The pain of her own love for those she had lost was almost too much to bear, and there was no one else left who would mourn.
There were hollows under the woman’s eyes, lines around her mouth. “Because he had life,” she answered. “He had a chance to be brave and to seek the truth, to honor and defend it. He had time in which he could have faced fear and overcome it; to know himself without deceit, excuse, or self-pity; to bear pain without bitterness. He had days in which to laugh, to see beauty, to fill his heart with gratitude. He could have been kind and brave and generous.” Her voice was very soft, and she spoke slowly, as if even the words hurt. “Above all, there were people he could have loved and learned to forgive. He is gone, and who is there in the world that is poorer?” She looked at the grave, the dry surface already smoothing over in the wind. “Now all his chances are finished. Of course I weep for him!”
For a moment Ta-Thea glimpsed an untrodden region of the soul which dwarfed all she knew. The woman pitied the dead man not for anything that had happened to him, great or small, but for what he was, and even more profoundly for what he was not. Everyone to whom I read this excerpt has the same reaction of awe. No, the rest of the book is not this good: how could it be? But the woman who wrote those feelings and has that understanding deserves to be read.
Jinnayah
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Journal Entry 3 by jinnayah from Ann Arbor, Michigan USA on Wednesday, June 02, 2004
There we are: chapter XI knocked off. I can understand why pleasantread was not so enamored of the book. Phase III, from chapter VIII on, has consisted so far simply of Tathea living, learning, and teaching. The plot has kind of dissipated. I don't mind for now, because I can't get tired of the book at my pace, and because I like interacting with Perry's ideas. But this no longer does seem like a book simply to be read for fun.
The watchman (p. 246) ... When Alexius asked, "Is it in the Book?" I knew immediately that what he sought is in the Bible. This particular passage refers to Ezekiel 3:16-21 (easy to look up on the NETBible). It is the watchman's duty to warn of danger. Whether others heed the warning or not is on their heads. But if the warning was never given, from fear that it might not be heeded, whose fault is it then when the others are caught unawares?
I am slowly growing in my faith. Whatever the direction of growth, it happens for nearly all people slowly almost all of the time. I don't understand the will of the Lord, or God's plan. This woman in this book spends all day every day learning that, and still she is never finished learning. Four years now she has been a teacher and student alike of God's plan for human salvation. The teaching still feels new again every day. I am not ashamed I have not that kind of time to devote to my faith, although I could definitely read the Bible more than what I do.
Tathea does raise real questions for me. "The power of the law is given greater weight," Alexius warns, and Tathea agrees, "We must be honest in warning, and yet not so rigid as to frighten people away" (242). Even this discussion is frightening enough. I have had Mormom missionaries come to my door--good women, with whom I made friends. I have spoken also with Baptists who went door-to-door, and I have many friends in the movement called the local church, who have beliefs I might call more hard-core than my own. They believe more stridently in reward and punishment, in urgency, in responsibility to witness. They believe Jesus Christ is the only way to full salvation. I am not willing to say that. I believe Christ lived and died for the salvation of all people, and that he does intercede for all, yet I cannot say that those who do not accept him have lost their chance for (re)union with God. It is too harsh. It doesn't make sense. Do I stand, then, with those "through al lthe ages past, and to come, who would see something of the truth and turn away from it because of its cost" (243)?
I do not believe that. Sometimes I resent my more "hard-core" Christian friends for their questions, their probing, their unwillingness to compromise or accept "maybe" for an answer. Most of the time, though, I can answer them in all good conscience on my own terms, and not have to care if that suffices quite according to their terms. Yes, I have thrown myself on Christ's mercy and accepted him as my Lord and savior. Yes, I have been baptized already and I am on my own path towards God; and with God's help I "will continue in the fellowship and breaking of bread" along that path, in the words of my own church's baptismal service.
Certainty isn't everything. Faith is easy and hard. I am proud of myself for my doubts sometimes: they bear witness to my continued learning, and my humility. But I must make certain not to take my doubts for granted any more than my certainties. All must be challenged and stand up to those challenges.
*****
For the first time, I have had a request for a book from a fellow BookCrosser, whom I hope was intrigued by my journal entries (although perhaps she had heard of the book already). I am sending it on to her, probably today.
I cannot necessarily recommend you take as much time as I do, but be sure to take your time. Perry does not write lightly in this book.
Enjoy.
Jinnayah
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Journal Entry 5 by jinnayah from Ann Arbor, Michigan USA on Monday, November 15, 2004
Anne Perry is rewriting the Bible. I'll just come right out and say it. We all know it's true. Most of what she writes is solid Biblical theology; some of it Mormon rather than Biblical. This is Perry taking the lessons of the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and church teachings of thousands of years and distilling it into her own version of its most important teachings. And using it to tell a story. As I hear more direct quotes from the Book I find myself wishing to get into Perry's head.
How would you rewrite the Bible? What would you "improve upon," not change but make more clear? What "should" God have said? Genesis charges humans, "Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground" (Gen. 1:28). Perry revises that, "For a space the earth is lent to man, to come under his stewardship, not to be his possession ..." (261).
She spouts liberal modern theology, not the words of the Bible but a new interpretation of it. We find custodianship a healthier attitude than ownership, and a humbler, more respectful one. Although God "has created [humans] but a little lower than the angels" (Ps. 8:5), that should be for us justification not for arrogance but for responsibility. "[Of him] to whom much is given, much will be required" (Tathea 244). Stewardship of the world is a mighty gift: "and he will answer to me for every stick and stone of it, every leaf and flower, and every living thing upon its face, for good or for ill" (Tathea 261).
So I imagine Perry thinking. How much faith it must have taken to write this book! To glorify God's word by fictionalizing it ... Perry must have walked a thin line indeed. This is a novel of worship, this was written for the glory of God: as a Christian, I feel it in my heart. Yet it was not written to be sacred, or even to be a work of theology. Tathea was written as a story, an element of God's eternal story.
The Bible has been revised before, of course. It's called the New Testament. It's called the Koran. It's called the Book of Mormon. New prophets arose out of the Hebrew tradition--if not all out of the Hebrew clan--who wanted to simplify God's teaching and make it more available to all people. Tathea's own work is something like that: "She understood that those whose nature did not drive them to study and to seek were still worthy of al lthw knowledge the Book could offer" (240). She considers herself merely a translator and teacher, not a prophet, but how do you think she'll be remembered by the followers of the Book?
Anne Perry is not a prophet. But she's a good woman of God, and I am learning from her.
Jinnayah
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Tathea
