Having finished a first draft of my novel-in-progress, The Music of the Mountain, I find I need a concise description to answer the question, “What’s it about?”
So tentatively, in an attempt to distill sixty thousand words into a phrase or a sentence, I am sallying forth with, “Saving books in order to save Western Civilization” or perhaps, “A philosophy professor, a history teacher, an honest journalist, and a praying priest, secretly save classic history and literature before they are burned by the Social Justice Committee”. Sounds like Fahrenheit 451, and in some respects it is a modern version Bradbury’s dystopian novel, but much more. Set in January 2023, the Emergency Powers of government has decreed classics to be hateful and has erased those portions of the Internet deemed too white. Libraries are closed due to the pandemic, and will unlikely reopen. So my intrepid professor gathers a few booklovers, former students, to help her save civilization, one shelf at a time. Lo and behold, a secret library emerges!
So the novel continues my fascination with words, and with people, and this time with virtues and memory. Language itself is a test of memory, how we write words into our minds, onto our hearts, onto our tongue in speech. Each one of us is a word, an expression of God’s love and will and design. Each one of us is unique, precious, and loved.
I believe also, that each one of us is necessary to the plan of salvation. Each plays their part, if only to link to another who links to another who links to another… until we form a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter of God’s will for mankind. Usually, we have no idea who might be the one who links to us, or who we are linking to. Who reads these words, who hears a sermon, who takes an idea from a book or a person and sends it flying through the stratosphere to someone else. Every person counts in God’s plan, and when one is lost (that lost sheep) another must be found. We are letters in the word, cursive dancing across a page, joined with others to form phrases and sentences, that fill the Earth in life and the Heavens in eternal life. My bishop of blessed memory often consoled me with the words, “Nothing is lost. Everything counts.”
And so we plant the seeds of memorized words and phrases in our hearts this Lenten season, to be ready for rising from the earth triumphantly. “O Lord, thou hast searched me out and known me, thou knowest my thoughts long before. Thou art about my path and about my bed, and art acquainted with all my ways. For lo, there is not a word on my tongue, but thou, O Lord, knowest it all together. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me. I cannot attain unto it…” (Psalm 139)
Christians believe in a personal God, a God that makes a difference in our lives and in our deaths. He is with us, Emmanuel. The shepherd boy David knew this in his songs in the fields, so that God could mold him to become the origin of the “Line of David” that would send forth the Christ to save the world. No small thing. He was chosen from the Chosen People of Israel and one can see why, “For my reins are thine; thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.”
And so we sing the song of love, the melody of creation, the hymn of praise to God, our creator, our Father, our Lord, our Spirit. The song begins as a solo, then joins in with others, then a great chorus rises from the Earth, a love song to God.
That is what Lent is, singing our song of life here among the living, choosing the good and rejecting the evil, cultivating Christ within us to rise on Easter morning.
And that reminds me – my Music of the Mountain is about virtue, what it is, why we need it, how to sing it in our lives. Faith, hope, and charity. Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice. And, as we heard recently, the greatest of these is charity, love. For without love, we are tinkling cymbals. Without love, we are nothing.
And there is a love story too in my little book, and a past tragedy that needs healing, and heroic visions inspired by those who fought for freedom in the past, and escape stories of the Holocaust, so that we never forget.
But most of all, it is a collection of words and sentences and paragraphs that run and dance over the white pages, creating love and life and… expressions of who we are and who we are meant to be, a love song to life and the Creator of all life.
Thanks be to God.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 