Crazy for God (47 page)

 

In 1980, when we were about to move to America, I had to pack up everything in my studio in Chalet Regina. It was as if I was packing the belongings of a beloved relative who had died six years before. I hadn’t touched a brush since 1974. Everything was lying just as I’d left it when I followed Billy Zeoli into a life that changed everything for me and made me almost forget who I had hoped to be.

There was an unfinished painting still on the easel. As I packed up dozens of tubes of paint, jars full of brushes, my
woodcut blocks, sketchpads, charcoal, and pencils, I tried not to look at anything too closely. After we got to our new home in America, I left everything in the boxes.

It was over thirty years before I unpacked my paints. Before that, I hadn’t had the courage to face the evidence of my treason. Abandoning painting made everything else I was doing seem half-assed until I had worked hard enough at my “secular” writing to feel that I had rehabilitated myself.

Genie once asked me if I was ever going to paint again. My answer: “I made one false start. I want to be good at something. I’m sticking with the writing for now.” But once I had four novels published, and four nonfiction “secular” books, too, it was as if I’d built a wall to keep out the memories of those evangelical pieces of propaganda I’d written so badly and hastily, and the crappy movies I’d made in Hollywood.

That was when I decided I
could
unpack my art supplies. When I did, I felt as if the brushes, unused canvases, paints, and the old crusted palette were shouting “Where the
fuck
have you been?”

Most of the thirty-year-old tubes were still okay. I dragged my old easel out of the barn and set it up in the renovated wood-shed attached to our house. I write at one end of the room and paint at the other. I write every day, seven days a week. And sometimes I paint. Not every day, but fairly regularly.

 

What represents faith to me these days? It is my father fighting for truth as he saw it, struggling on and saying he was sorry for his sins. . . . My mother battling her demons, wanting to be someone else, failing but still loving her children, reading to me and doing her best, even though she felt cheated by life.
. . . John Sandri forgiving the people at L’Abri who forbade him to teach, and working to keep the mission open when, if he had walked away, he could have shut it down. . . . Gordon Parke striving for long days at Great Walstead and still finding the energy to come out onto the lawn and play a rollicking game of kick-the-can with a hundred eager boys and never letting us down. . . . Genie forgiving me, and her clear-eyed spirituality that is not maudlin or judgmental or pietistic but matter-of-fact and sweet as a long kiss. . . . My children
knowing
that
I know
I failed them in so many ways, and yet reaching out to me to reassure me that they are happy. . . . Christmas dinner with my daughter-in-law Becky’s generous family, with her Jewish atheist mother Lauren, and David her lapsed Roman Catholic father, and her brother Alex and our families often agreeing on nothing—except that we love our children and each other, and that is more than enough. . . . Father Chris, kicking my ass and forcing me to treat Genie better,
or else. . . .
Every drill instructor at the Parris Island and San Diego Marine recruit training depots who will get up tomorrow morning and lead his or her recruits from the front, sacrificing everything for them. . . .

Faith is certainly
not
theology to me. Church is just one of the places I look for answers to the only real question I have: Why do we long for meaning?

For me, faith is best experienced in the twilight in the medieval hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at Christmas-time. Every November, a group of volunteers—mostly middle-aged and elderly ladies working under the direction of the museum’s conservancy department—put up the “Angel Tree” and decorate it with Neapolitan eighteenth- and nineteenth-century terra-cotta and wood silk-clad figures: beautifully
painted faces gentle and innocent; swirling robes of silk, rich as thick smoke curling heavenward—a nativity scene to break even my cynical heart.

Off to one side is the entrance to the halls holding the Byzantine collection, a glittering reminder of how Greek and Roman art merged seamlessly into the Byzantine world, carrying forward a message of beauty and civilization. People are coming up from the cafeteria downstairs buttoning their coats, getting ready to leave and intending to hurry past the tree. But they linger. I linger.

There are Christmas hymns playing quietly. An art purist might call the seasonal tableau sentimental. But the Met and museums everywhere fight to preserve the human meaning found in our most precious artifacts, and many of those artifacts—from Syrian gods to Italian Virgin-and-Childs—reflect the fact that we humans take hope in the irrational.

 

The moments that changed me, perhaps for the better, have not been those I chose, let alone was in charge of or planned. America’s best movie maker, the late Robert Altman, said “You can pick the best six things in anything I made, and none of them were planned. It’s the mistakes I’m interested in. That’s where you hit the truth button.”

It is no accident that in
Baby Jack
I have God quoting Altman. For me, there have been some pivotal “Altman truth buttons”: Marrying Genie because I broke my sullen teenage rule and went to dinner one night instead of huddling in my studio in splendid isolation. . . . Having Jessica, our “mistake,” because I was too lazy, horny, and/or stupid to use a condom. . . .John volunteering to serve our country and connecting me
to my country in a different way. . . . My finding what I want to do for a living by stumbling into writing novels because of Genie’s nudge. . . .

I find little snippets of the answer or, at least,
an
answer, in unexpected places. For instance, I spent a day with Francis at his school recently. I had asked him if I could visit. Francis was teaching a humanities class to seniors. My son answered questions and paced the room. His gestures reminded me so much of my father, the way he put his thumb under the chin, index finger placed alongside his nose, when listening to a question. I felt close to Francis, and through him so unexpectedly close to Dad, as if the three of us were gathered in the room.

I had only planned to see my son in action. (I wanted to take pictures for our family scrapbook.) The “mistake” intruded, and I “saw” my dad as a young energetic gifted speaker, as he must have been back when he was a pastor of his first church.

 

Sometimes the “irrational”—and the intuitive—is the only thing that I count on. Long before John went to war, and long before the afternoon I watched Francis teach, Jessica flew home from Finland with her husband Dani and Amanda. Amanda was only three months old. (Genie had been with Jessica when Amanda was born and came home a week before Jessica came home.) I was counting the days until I could see the baby.

I opened the front door. I didn’t know what to expect. Jessica wordlessly held Amanda out to me. Amanda was awake and silent, calm, looking right up at me.

Jessica placed my granddaughter in my arms, a light little bundle, a sweet-smelling package, so light. I turned and went to sit in the kitchen at my usual place. Jessica was there
watching her dad, that man who had given her so much grief, who took her all over the world, that man who read her stories, and taught her to box, who had her when he was a child, who slapped her and pulled her hair, that man she hated, that man she forgave who “gave her away” at her wedding, filled the old rowboat with ice, champagne, and strawberries at her reception in his garden, that man who cheered her lacrosse team, that man she watched make deals, make speeches, paint, make films, scream at his wife, convert to a new religion, fail as a movie director, crash, resurrect as a writer, she handed him her baby.

I looked into Amanda’s face and she looked back at me with clear brown eyes, and they were the same almond shape,
exactly
the same shape as Genie’s, when she was eighteen, the evening I first saw her. And this new love was the strongest I’d ever felt, ever, like nothing else I have experienced. The peace that “passes understanding” seeped from Amanda to me. Jessica watched us both and let us be.

Perhaps Mom and Dad were right. In an infinite universe, everything must have happened at least once, someplace, sometime. So maybe there is a God who forgives, who loves, who knows. I hope so. Anything is possible in a world where a daughter forgives her father, for ignorance, for anger, for failure, and places her daughter in his arms.

My wife Genie read this book several times at several stages. I rewrote and added material because of Genie’s very good suggestion. My daughter-in-law Becky read it three times and made precise, detailed, and immensely helpful editorial notes. My daughter Jessica, my brother-in-law John Sandri, Frank Gruber, and Holly Meade read the manuscript at various stages. Their comments were so helpful. Thank you all.

My daughter Jessica, my sons Francis and John, my sisters Debby and Priscilla, and my old friends Jim Buchfuehrer, Ray Cioni, and Frank Gruber generously contributed pieces I used. Thank you.

My sister Susan visited me while I was writing. Susan listened as I read her passages from the manuscript. She encouraged me. I’m grateful. On several occasions, my son Francis also listened while I read long sections out loud. His encouragement was wonderful. His suggestions were good. I read several chapters out loud to my granddaughter Amanda over the phone, and she was so very encouraging.

My editor, Will Balliett challenged me to explain, trim, refine, polish, expand, and, as he always does, cut to the heart of the matter. I rewrote the book, twice, for Will and added over a hundred new pages based on his notes asking for more information. I’m so glad that he was the editor for this very personal project. (He even called from his vacation and we did several long sessions on the phone.) It was good to work with a true friend.

My agent Jennifer Lyons, as always, was a good friend. Without her,
there would be no book and I would have no career as a writer either. Phil Gaskill did a lovely job on the copy edit. Jamie McNeely Quirk was kind in her capacity as managing editor. She patiently explained the mysteries of checking the final copy edit on a computer file, rather than on paper, as I was used to. I survived and even learned to like the process! I would also like to thank Shaun Dillon, who works with Will Balliett. Shaun was always so very helpful in every aspect of this project and made everything run smoothly in my day-to-day work with everyone at Carroll and Graf/Avalon. Vanessa Crooks very kindly helped sort and scan the photographs herein. She also gave me useful feedback on the text. I thank her for her cheerful kindness. Ryan Jensen is a great friend to Genie and myself. Without his help with our computers, work in our home would grind to a halt.

In the midst of writing, Guy and Marnie de Vanssay were kind enough to invite Genie and me to stay with them for a desperately needed holiday. We rested in their magnificent Château de la Barre. It is one of the most beautiful family-owned chateau/hotels in an “undiscovered” and unspoiled part of France in the Loire Valley region. We drank wine, ate cheese, visited medieval churches, and slept! (
www.chateaudelabarre.com
)

Later, on that same vacation, Debby and Udo very kindly put us up at the Francis Schaeffer Foundation in Gryon, Switzerland. John and Priscilla entertained us at their home in Huémoz. And my mother and I had breakfast together on several mornings and wonderful conversations in the evenings. Without that timely holiday, I don’t think I would have completed this project.

The poem I quoted in the final chapter is taken from “Tales of Ise” (Edo period, eighteenth century, used by permission from the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

I am grateful to Peter J. Boyer, who wrote “The Big Tent,” an article reviewing the fundamentalist-versus-modernism conflicts of the early 1900s to 1930s. (
The New Yorker,
August 22, 2005). I borrowed several sections and used them almost verbatim in chapter 18.

abortion

“Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation,”

“Abortion Chic-The Attraction of Wanted-Unwanted Pregnancies,”

A Christian Manifesto

ACLU

Africa

Ahmanson, Howard

AIDS

Alban, Mr.

Altman, Robert

André Shipping Line

“Angel Tree,”

Anglicanism

Annarosa’s Bakery

apologetics

Armstrong, Karen

Arshad, Mus

art

Bach, Steven

Baez, Joan

Barilon, Mickey

Bazlinton, John

Bazlinton, Sandra

BBC Productions

Beatles, The

Beau Soleil (Beautiful Sunshine)

Beckett, Samuel

Bellini, Vincenzo

Bergen, Candice

Bill and Gloria Gaither Gospel Trio

Bob Jones University

Bodrov, Sergei

Brabey, Mr.

Brane, Bernard

Bronowski, Jacob