Reading fiction and growing in faith
The Rev. Dr. Doug Basler, an author who serves First Presbyterian Church of Grimes, Iowa, appears on ‘A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast’
LOUISVILLE — How can our faith grow and be challenged through fiction?
That was the initial question that the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe, posed to the Rev. Dr. Doug Basler, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Grimes, Iowa, and the author of “All Swirling and Weaving: Reflections on Reading Fiction and Growing in Faith.” Listen to their 47-minute conversation here.
“It’s a great question. It’s central to what I’m trying to do in the book — to introduce fiction as a way of spiritual formation,” Basler told the hosts. While many people read fiction for entertainment, “I think fiction can form us and shape us,” he said.
It’s no accident that Jesus used parables to teach people about the world that God envisioned, according to Basler. “Years ago I heard Russell Moore say, ‘It’s one thing to believe in the forgiveness of sins,’ quoting from the Apostles’ Creed,” Basler said. “It’s another thing to say, ‘There once was a man who had two sons,’ quoting from Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.”
“I’m a pastor in Des Moines, Iowa, a Presbyterian pastor, and I believe in the forgiveness of sins, certainly,” Basler said. “I believe that what we say is true in the Apostles’ Creed, but I think Jesus knows how our hearts work and how our imaginations work. He tells a story to help us reshape and retune our understanding of who God is,” this “loving father who embraces his wayward children.”
In the parable, “God is doing a new thing. There’s a party going on, and [the religious leaders who first heard the parable] are standing outside complaining instead of joining the party,” Basler said. “This small story works on multiple levels and has the power to shape our imagination and shape our thinking.”
As Doong pointed out, part of faith is the ability to imagine — to imagine the world as God intends it and to imagine what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus. “The parables aren’t real,” Doong said, “but Jesus uses them to remind us of these very important lessons.”
When we’re bombarded every day by bad news and incendiary social media posts, “fiction tends to flatten things out. It can remind us there’s a bigger world out there than what we’re consuming,” Basler said. “Fiction can awaken our own stories in ways we typically don’t expect or aren’t necessarily looking for.”
For Basler, one of those moments came a few years ago when he read Wendell Berry’s “The Memory of Old Jack.” An installment in Berry’s Port William series, the book tells Jack’s story through his memory of purchasing a second farm decades before even though he didn’t need it. The decision leads to complications throughout Jack’s life.
“I’m a pastor, not a farmer, and so I didn’t want more land,” Basler said. “But I wanted more people. I wanted a bigger congregation. I thought it would mean I was successful.”
“I saw in Jack’s ambition my own ambition,” he said. “It awakened my own story and forced me to ask tough questions about what am I doing, why am I doing it, and what’s my motivation?”
“I believe the Holy Spirit used that novel to show me some areas of my life where I was heading off track,” he said. “I was just reading a book by an author I love.”
“I really do think [reading] fiction can be a practice of hope,” Basler said. “We see all the struggles out there and we think, what difference can little old me make? Fiction looks at the details of someone’s life, and it’s a nice reminder that the little things do matter.”
Sometimes we read to escape the world around us, “but I think it’s more than that,” he said. “It’s preparing us, shaping us, equipping us to be hopeful and to act in courageous ways.”
In his 12-chapter book, Basler writes about a dozen works that reflected his reading list for the last couple of years.
In the first chapter, he looks at Claire Keegan’s short story, “Small Things Like These,” in which Keegan, who’s Irish, writes about the Magdalene Laundries scandals. Pregnant girls who were kicked out of their homes were taken to convents that provided laundry care for the community. “There was all kinds of abuse where these young girls’ children would be taken from them and put up for adoption,” Basler said. Critics called it modern-day slavery.
Keegan tells the story through the eyes of the local coal merchant, who one day finds a girl locked up in a coal shed. “He sees the girl and it wrecks him,” Basler said. “It’s a secret that everyone in town knows about, but nobody is courageous enough to do something about.”
For Basler, what’s powerful about “Small Things Like These” is “I would have watched a two-minute news broadcast about the scandal, and it would have hit me like everything else does that day. I would have forgotten about it,” he said. “But reading this story, it gets under your skin. I got invested in this man’s life and I got to know who he is and who is family is.”
Another chapter is on Toni Morrison’s “Sula.” Basler said he grew up watching such films as “Remember the Titans,” which tells the story of a racially integrated football team. “They work it out throughout the movie, and in the end everyone is happy,” Basler said. “Toni Morrison’s novels are different. She doesn’t have nice, clean, neat endings.”
“It’s a reminder that while we may love happy endings, for a lot of people the endings weren’t happy,” he said. “It’s a correction on some of the ways stories can be told.”
Asked by Doong whether there are questions we should be asking while we’re reading fiction that can help us grow in our faith, Basler hesitated. “Part of me wants to be careful and not turn reading fiction into some kind of homework assignment where we use it to get something out of it,” he said.
It can be as simple as paying attention while reading, he said. “What am I thinking as I finish a paragraph or a chapter? What am I feeling as I’m reading? Just to notice that, or maybe jot down a note as you’re reading,” he suggested.
It can also be helpful to read a good book with other people. One Basler participates in annually with a group of pastors “opens up parts of the book I didn’t notice” and “the ways it impacted other people.”
“You have to do a little reflection yourself and you get to hear from others. One idea bounces off another,” he said of that approach. “The church I’m at now has a book group. It’s a cool way for the congregation to come together.”
“Fiction opens up emotion when maybe we didn’t expect it to,” Catoe said. “I think creativity has so much power right now, and I think it’s helpful that you’re framing fiction as a spiritual practice.” Catoe said he looks forward to reading more fiction throughout the year ahead.
New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous episodes here.
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