My life and family experiences of the past eighteen years have given me a unique opportunity to sit in the pews of other Christian faiths more often than the average LDS church member. With this frequent observation has come an appreciation for how others’ express their love for God and man, struggle to be good disciples of Christ, and strive to serve as Christ served.
Though we as members of the LDS church may feel we have a leg up, as it were, in the religion department, it is important to note that faith is a completely different matter. Down here on Earth, with the veil drawn, blocking our knowledge of who we once were, it is a given that we each have and will experience a myriad of earthly difficulties, church member or not. It is also a given that we will each react to said difficulties in a myriad of earthly ways– from faith-filled to faith-less.
My selections for December served to remind me that, regardless of what denomination (or lack thereof) one may be a part, each of us has to find our own way back Home. As individuals, each and every one of us has to come to our own understanding of God’s plan for us. Along the way, we have to remember, at all times and places, we are each beloved children of the Everlasting God; and at certain points in life, that is much harder than one might think.
Same Kind of Different as Me, Ron Hall and Denver Moore
I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried I was so different from them that we wadn’t ever gon’ have no kind a’ future. But I found out everybody’s different–the same kind of different as me. We’re all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us. The truth is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain’t no final restin’ place. So, in a way, we is all homeless–just workin our way toward home.1
Northwest Assistance Ministries (NAM), began in 1983, when a group of ten different religious congregations in NW Houston came together to provide community assistance to needy families and individuals in an area of suburban Houston that is home to over one million people. Today, it is supported by numerous business and community partners, and more than forty-five various congregations, including the Champions Ward, Klein Stake.
I have had the pleasure of delivering Meals on Wheels for NAM for a year now, as well as doing some painting/ graphic work to spruce up their retail thrift stores. If it hadn’t been for NAM, I might not of heard of the collaborative narrative Same Kind of Different as Me. It just so happens one of the authors spoke at a NAM fundraiser in the spring of this year, bringing the book to my attention.
With the two authors alternating their own stories between chapters, Same Kind of Different of Me tells of two men with disparate life experiences. Sharing only the common bond of lives sitting at rock bottom, Denver Moore, a poor, uneducated, homeless black man, from Podunk, Louisiana, and Ron Hall, a wealthy, white art dealer living the life of Riley in Fort Worth, Texas, are souls in a sort of purgatory. The easily identifiable problem: they lost sight of life’s purpose, in a very profound way.
The one thing that saves them both, however, is the intervention of a former sorority belle from Texas Christian University, a woman with a deep and abiding faith in Christ by the name of Debbie. It just so happens Debbie is Ron Hall’s wife, and by opening her heart to the pure love of Christ, she becomes a saving angel for not only her husband, but also a hard-luck case she had never met before 1998.
After nearly eighteen years of marriage, Ron strayed. He just got so full of himself that he forgot the commitment he made to Debbie, and to their children. As she preferred the simple things, Debbie felt shut off from Ron’s glamourous life– and they inevitably grew apart.
Firm in her commitment to save their marriage, Debbie works hard to find a place for the couple to serve others, and serve together, while rebuilding their fractured relationship. That place is the Union Gospel Mission, in the heart of one of Fort Worth’s seediest areas. Ron is not so sure about this mission of Debbie’s, but he is certain of her, so he goes along.
In the mean time, Denver Moore, whose early years were spent working as a part of the South’s modern slave system, once known commonly as “sharecropping,” is working his way towards the Union Gospel Mission. He is lucky, at times. A paternalistic plantation owner helps him along in ways, but more often than not tragedy follows Denver throughout his youth and early adulthood. With no opportunity for education, his isolation in the Louisiana sticks keeps him from the knowledge that society is changing, and that he can change along with it.
Closing in on thirty years of age, Denver finally decides to take a chance out side of Louisiana, and hops a train heading west. He spends much of the next thirty years on the streets in various places, and even resides for a time in Angola Prison, back home in Louisiana. By the time he meets Debbie and Ron Hall in Fort Worth, he has developed into a reclusive, embittered old man with little trust for do-gooders, let alone, white, Christian ones.
Through persistence, and many, many prayers, Debbie is finally able to break through Denver’s hardened shell of obstinacy. Through even more prayers, He and Ron become close friends. Once the barrier between the couple and the homeless man fell, the personal spiritual development of the two men develops into something quite miraculous.
To one of faith, it will be said the Halls had been put in Fort Worth at the right time and place for Denver. Likewise, God surely knew Denver could help the Halls, too. Far different from the white paternalism of a by-gone era, the relationship that eventually develops between Denver and the Halls is purely symbiotic.
In reading various reviews of Same Kind of Different as Me, I was rather struck by some of the vehemence expressed by the non-believers who bothered to read it. There were cries of “evangelism,” “thinly veiled proselyting,” and “hokey preaching.” Some commented that they liked Denver’s earthiness but found Ron to be nothing more than a privileged whiner. They were turned off by all the talk of dreams and angels. Mostly, I think the naysayers didn’t want to hear about God, or certainly Debbie Hall’s exceedingly strong belief in Him and His ability to change people for the better.
The average imperfect man or woman of faith will no doubt see himself in the authors’ vivid descriptions of spiritual reticence and neglect, as well as in their faith-filled awakenings. There is nothing perfect about Ron or Denver, or even Debbie, but their story is one of great charity and selfless service; it is also about being open to spiritual promptings, even when that prompting may come from way outside of your comfort zone.
Growing up in the South, you kind of get used to the evangelistic side of Christianity, though it isn’t always easy. I have been known to joke, “Yeah, I’ve been persecuted by them.” Conversely, I can also say, without smirking, I count some Evangelicals among my dearest friends–we just promise not to harass each other.
It would be disingenuous of any person to deny there is a great love for others and a genuineness about this very emotional side of the Christian faith. And as I read Hall and Moore’s story, trying to gage the reaction of the average LDS reader, I pondered the following: Do we as Latter-day Saints not have our own evangelism? Our own faith in prayers, angels, and dreams? Spiritual promptings and emotional outpourings? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding Yes! and I expect Same Kind of Different as Me to resonate strongly with LDS audiences.
Book website Link
Gilead: A Novel, Marilynne Robinson
I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly. As I was walking up to the church this morning, I passed that row of big oaks by the war memorial […] and I thought of another morning, fall a year or two ago, when they were dropping their acorns thick as hail almost […] I stood there a little out of range, and I thought, It is all still new to me. I have lived my life on the prairie and a line of oak trees can still astonish me.2
I wasn’t too sure if I was ever going to make it “into” Gilead, let alone “through” Gilead. It took a while before I wrapped my mind around the story Marilynne Robinson was trying to tell, and to decipher whom she had enlisted to tell it. Fortunately, once I got everything sorted out upstairs, Gilead had me hooked.
Set in the mid 1950s, in the tiny prairie town of Gilead, Iowa, seventy-six year old pastor John Ames knows his time left on Earth is short. He is both pleased and disappointed by this knowledge. By some measures, Ames has lead a long, fulfilling life in the service of our Lord, but in other ways, his life is just beginning.
Having lost a wife and child to childbirth decades earlier, he was blessed to find a devoted woman of almost half his years to see him through his final decade of life. Together, they are raising a son, for whom Ames feels a great sadness and regret for not being the father an active boy deserves.
In order to give his young son a lasting record of his aging father, Pastor Ames sets forth to record his memoirs, recounting all he can think of that would give the boy a “fatherly” hand later in life. Ames’ memories speak of a man who has known the depth of understanding a lifelong friendship brings, the frustration of a man with unfulfilled dreams, the anxiety of difficult family ties, and the spiritual strength that comes from serving as a leader to a small, but dedicated flock for many years.
The greater part of what is translated from Robinson’s pen to Ames’ writings is beauty, love, and the wisdom of ages. From time to time, the pastor waxes philosophical, inviting the reader to query along with him about the sense of this world, the universe, and its Maker, but he always does so in the gentlest, most reverential of tones.
As I went back through Gilead, searching for quotes to place in my column, I was surprised to find so many doubly dog-eared pages (no, I don’t believe in using bookmarks), noting passages that touched me. Selecting just one was quite difficult, selecting something less than half a page was even more so.
In the same way that Leif Enger’s So Brave,Young and Handsome leads readers through a forgotten time of greater gentility and Jan Karon’s Mitford series gives a spiritual twist to an ordinary life, Gilead manages to accomplish both. The pace of Robinson’s work is ploddingly slow at moments, but thankfully, the time and place we are asked to walk through is one of respite, with a story worth slowing down to read.
Reading Group Guides link
As an extra bonus: a sizzling article in which Robinson reviews Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion. link
End Notes
1. Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Same Kind of Different as Me. (Thomas Nelson:
Nashville, TN, 2006) 235.
2. Marilynne Robinson. (Farar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2004) 57.
Next Month
In this House of Brede, Rumer Godden
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
I’d love to know what books you’re reading and whether or not you’ve enjoyed my recommendations. Please, add me to your friends’ list at GoodReads.com or contact me via email at [email protected]
