Many of my ideas come to me while sitting on a folding chair in our Berkeley chapel and singing and praying the Mass. Today an obvious thought landed in my aging brain, that there is a parallel between the story my main characters are acting out and the history of western civilization.
My four friends – Patricia, Fr. Davies, Winston, and Molly – seek to save classic fiction, history, philosophy, and theology in order to save Western Civilization. Their goal is noble but illegal, as the state raids libraries, public and private, to destroy these books that challenge mankind to be better, to confess, to repent, and to follow ideals of beauty, truth, and freedom. They have all been “cancelled” in one way or another and come together with a common loss and common goal.
These characters have indeed become my friends, added to the exclusive cast that populate my stories. They have parts of me in all of them, so in that sense they are my brothers and sisters, my mothers and fathers, my aunts and uncles, and most importantly, my children. It’s quite a lovely phenomenon.
But what occurred to me during the liturgy today was that what they are doing in the pages of The Music of the Mountain is what the monks did in the northern monasteries of Europe in the early medieval world when they copied manuscripts to save the classical/Christian world from disappearing. This is the thesis of the wonderful history by Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, in which he describes how St. Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century, after the fall of Rome. With Christianity he also brought the Judaic and classical world that became the foundation of Western Europe in the centuries to come.
And so we celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick this week. Perhaps it was Patrick who spoke to me this morning in Berkeley, pointing out the obvious parallels, saving civilization from destruction, even if it means centuries of underground protection of the great ideas of the West – freedom, human dignity, love, truth, valor, merit. For each one of us is responsible for our great inheritance, to keep it safe, to pass it on to the next generation or even next century.
I named one of my characters Patricia and have kept it, which I don’t usually do, but now I see who her namesake is. Seems obvious now, but isn’t it crazy how we can’t see what is right in front of us? I also chose “St. Patrick’s Breastplate hymn” to be one another character hears again and again… now I see why. Again, it came to me suddenly (each character has an assigned hymn).
And so as we consider memory and memorizing and remembering. Like my four friends, I am working on my Psalm, and this year I might actually have it down, but the last line keeps eluding me. Still, twice daily I feed on Psalm 139, as we feed on the loaves and fishes multiplied in the Gospel this morning, as we feed on Christ himself in the Eucharist each Sunday, as we travel to Jerusalem and the great events of salvation and resurrection.
“Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect and in thy book were all my members written; Which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” (139:15-16)
Thanks be to God. Deo Gratias.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 