I’m in the middle of reading David James Duncan’s The River Why. Without giving too much away (because one of the particular joys of reading DJD is in the way his work unexpectedly unfolds as simply as a corporal on the altar), I will say that the question “Why?” presents itself repeatedly and in such an insistent way that one might not voluntarily start asking it after reading even half the book.
And yet, it’s a fair question. Why am I writing this and why should you read it? The answer to the second part of the question is easier, because I don’t think that you should read it, but I hope you will want to. The first part of the question is a little harder, but part of it is that I like to write. People have complimented my writing since I was a child, and I like that attention too. I also hope that saying what I have been given to say might allow you to say what is given to you.
Many years ago, I was at the Wild Goose Festival when it was held in Hot Springs, North Carolina. A friend had just completed, of all things, a fundraising pitch that had cracked me wide open. She stood on stage with her grandson and expressed her belief that experiences like the Wild Goose were important not just for her grandson’s future but because he, like all our kids and grandkids, want to know us fully, as we most truly are.
At least I think that’s what she said. I kind of felt like I had been hit over the head with the staff of Moses, and I stumbled off into the woods to wrestle with the awful grace of being loved. It’s awful because I know what I have done.
As I was staggering through the woods, I came into a space that had been the site of a children’s activity earlier in the day. There were strips of paper tied all over the branches of a tree, and on those strips of paper were confessions in childish handwriting of things these kids had said or done that they now regretted. I gathered that the exercise was about letting that shit go.
On one of the strips there was adult handwriting, which led me to believe that the penitent soul could not yet write. The strip simply said “I called God ‘stinky.’” I understood immediately because I too have called God “stinky.” God knows why. Sometimes our experience of the world stinks, and we wonder if the reason is that the creator of all things stank first. Or maybe we know things should be different and think the reason an all powerful deity that doesn’t just fix it is because God stinks.
God knows why, and God knows us fully, as we most truly are, and the thing that never ceases to slay me is that God loves us not in spite of all of this but because of all of this. Why? I can’t begin to say. What I can say is that I have called God “stinky” and lived to tell the tale. I hope the telling will give you the opportunity to call God whatever you need to call God so that you can live too.
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