Non-fiction / God Sits on the Shelf (Analysis)
God sits on my book shelf. Bound between King James, Carlos Castaneda, and the Tae Te Ching, the almighty waits. I’ve been searching for the real spiritual truth from the beginning of my time. My mother hung a crisp, white blouse every night on the door knob so I could be perfectly pressed for Catechism and obedience. When I knelt to repeat the prayers the sisters taught us, I looked up at Jesus hanging there on the cross. Does it all come down to this?
After tossing that aside in college, I liberated myself with Buddhism and Zen. Dabbled in Judaism and considered Hinduism. But, if asked on a dark night on the bottom bunk what I really thought of God, of spirituality, I’d have to admit I was afraid and had no idea where to turn. Where was God when I couldn’t pay rent? Where was God when my father had another heart attack? Where is God when I am alone, so alone. The spiritual truth I craved kept dodging me like puppy on the loose.
I moved to Costa Rica because it was warm; I deplored chipping ice off my windshield; and I hoped this little country without an army would offer me a chance at finding my inner peace. Surely God – THE truth – existed in paradise.
Since the birth of my son and his diagnosis of Down Syndrome, I’ve questioned God and THE truth even more. No God would desert a child to an incubator, inflict major surgery on his third day of life, and leave a scar of mental retardation. Was this karma biting me back? In the dark hours before morning as I sat with my nursing child, I often asked for the truth, again. I couldn’t help it.
After ten years here, I have a ring of families I share life’s events with: birthday parties, graduations, weddings, and choral concerts. Every few months, I get invited to some sort of gathering, usually for children. One morning, I packed up my son, my daughter, the present, extra clothes, and plenty of bottled water for a friend’s daughter’s birthday party. We drove an hour to the country side.
Kids birthdays in the typical Costa Ricans in the country go like this: give the gift; have a cup of coffee or glass of soda; eat rice and chicken with macaroni topped with potato chips all on a plastic plate handed to you by the host or the person in charge of the kitchen that day (usually a tia -aunt); sing happy birthday; eat cake; bash pinata; more coffee or soda; ice cream cone; and then mill about until it feels socially acceptable to leave.
My son, almost three, took a few swings at the pinata and gathered a big bag of candy from the beaten Strawberry Shortcake. The afternoon was warm. I kept looking at the clock, wondering when I could leave. I opted for a cup of coffee as my daughter disappeared for another round of sliding down the grass hill in a toboggan. The brew was weak and hot. As I waited for it to cool, several old woman entered the tiny house. Rosaries hung from their hands. I’d forgotten about the blessing of the birthday child, her mother, and their home. This paradise is predominately Catholic. Blessings can happen at any event, but it’s not a given like the sugary frosting on the cake. It’s a ritual reserved for the more traditional Catholics, or at least those who want to be.
A woman took out her rosary, a prayer book, and older ladies gathered in a U around a small nativity set with a candle burning in the middle. In grade school I would have bowed my head in reverence; in college I would have scoffed; and now since moving to Costa Rica ten years ago, life has sat me down and taught me a thing or two. I’ve mellowed. Maybe there is something important happening here. Maybe I can paddle past the preaching and the fear. Could it be that God was bound up inside me the whole time, just waiting for me to turn to the right page? The mouths of the women raced over the prayers in harmony. The beat of their voices was seductive. I followed the cadence of the prayer in Spanish and rocked my head slightly to the beat, After a few rounds, I realized I was saying the prayer in English and knew every word.
In the middle of the sweat, and breath, and caffeine, I felt at peace. I closed my eyes and knelt down with that little girl in the crisp uniform. I told her to let the fear go. It’s just a pain in the ass anyway. She laughed at me said I shouldn’t use such words. We looked up at the cross. It does all come down to this: people, sharing, forgiveness, humility, empathy, and never, ever giving up. Upon finishing, the ladies were served up dessert by the newly blessed mother. My daughter came up to me and asked for more candy; my son woke up from his nap. The little old ladies got up and started walking home, holding a piece of birthday cake in one hand and a rosary in the other.
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This is an interesting piece. I like the way it starts out with God on your bookshelf. That gave me a clear picture of the relationship or the status of faith for the narrator.
For a moment when you talked about kneeling down to pray with the little girl, I thought that was cliche. But then you made the comment about being a pain in the a**. That made me laugh.
I didn’t rank you as high on the publishability (yes, I just wrote that). The writing is very reflective and the tone is sometimes passive, kind of despairing but not really wrestling, if that makes any sense. Sorry if it does not.
Anyway, for a short work like this, I think the tone takes a very special reader. While that kind of market could be booming right now with me being oblivious, I didn’t feel there was a lot to catch the publisher’s eye.
This is well written, and I am sure, close to your heart. Keep on writing.
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Your first page starts off pretty strong particularly the first paragraph, which is of course is important. However, you begin to get a bit hackneyed with “Where was God when I couldn’t pay rent? Where was God when my father had another heart attack? Where is God when I am alone, so alone.” instead of sticking to questions which seem to be the norm when it comes to “Where’s God?” you should go into more detail about a personal experience that made you start to doubt the existence of a God. You father’s heart attack maybe? In the second page I think you can do away with this line “My son, almost three, took a few swings at the pinata and gathered a big bag of candy from the beaten Strawberry Shortcake.” as it just shifts focus from the main point of this essay. Finally your “epiphany” seems to come way to quick, as this seems to be an issue you’ve been struggling with for years. If it’s that important to you it should surely take up more than two and a half pages.
I liked the non judgemental nature of the work. The writing was good but i would have liked more feeling at the start. The facts are facts but we do not know how you feel until later.
Classic internal struggle. I like how the “forced spirituality” of Catechism and family/community expectations raise questions which become answered from within and from simple, traditional acts such as the older woman doing their blessing.
I like the simplicity of the metaphors, i.e. “like the sugary frosting on the cake” come from within the story.
Very well written.
You wrote a wonderful recount of a story that has lingered in your heart for a long time. You drew me in with your questions and search to find the true nature of God. There is nothing for me to critique, for this is your journey and you took me along for the ride. Your experience speaks to those of us who have lost faith and are tired of searching and it tells us to just hold on a little while longer. I also liked your title very much.
Not a bad piece, I like how you just kind of happened into the spirituality you spent so much time searching for.
This image really bothers me, “The spiritual truth I craved kept dodging me like puppy on the loose.” When I think of chasing after a puppy, I imagine smiles and giggles, you don’t really mind that it is loose, because it is just a puppy, and there is freedom in watching it run free, knowing that you will be able to catch it easily. Searching for god for you seemed nothing like this; it is heart wrenching, and it is agony.
I also do not care for the paragraph that starts with “Kids birthdays in the typical Costa Ricans in the country go like this.” The list is too easy to skip over; it is boring, it may be that you are trying to convey the boredom experienced to the reader, but a bored reader is not a good thing. Also, the parenthesis are out of place, there is no need for it, the fact that a tia is the host can be told inline. No translation is needed either, the reader knows the setting; have faith that the reader can pick up on the Spanish surroundings, otherwise you take the reader out of the flow of the story.
I felt like I was taken in a snapshot of the narrators thoughts and family events and the cultural ways of the Costa Rican. Nice piece in that sense, especially as a lot of people question religion in some ways, I suspect you are right, it is about families sharing, rather than the big serious things like your son being born with Downs Syndrome etc. Yes God does sit on the shelf I agree.
The only problem I had in reading this was 1 sentence- in the typical Costa Ricans in the country- Suggest rewriting to - Kids birthdays, in a typical Costa Rican house hold, go like this. other than that well written.
This story shows a very heartwarming and honest search for faith, and explores the doubts that many are afraid to address. It would probably need to be expanded if it were to be published in a magazine; e.g., Our Sunday Visitor, or a compilation of faith-journey stories.
“I closed my eyes and knelt down with that little girl in the crisp uniform.” I’m not sure who this girl is: is she your daughter? the birthday girl? someone else?
The litany of activities for the birthday party is a bit difficult to read and should be reworked. I have a special love for the semicolon, but it is overused here—at least for modern publications.
I like the idea of your own faith journey being compared to those of the old rosary women, “traditional Catholics, or at least those who want to be”. Emphasis on the desire is important; the gift of faith from God is often given in response to our asking.
You have a lot of grammatical errors here, missing words, comma’s instead of period’s and vice versa. Just give this another once over and smooth it out a little bit.
Overall this is an intimate and well written piece, intelligent and thoughtful insights, and a lot of honesty. It is not self-serving or pretentious, just boiled down and straightforward. But your simile’s are weak, “dodging like a puppy on the loose” most notably. By the end of this piece your sentence’s become bland, and though this piece does not call for great complexity it would be served well by a little more variety. Otherwise, the content and message is clear and thoughtful you just need to work on your style.
This was a good way of expressing thoughts and feelings. I could almost see myself there and living inside your mind. Though the mood left me emotional you have the overall workings of a good life story. I was left wanting to know more about the girls childhood and life growing up. The struggle with her faith and the relationships she had on her way to becoming a mother. These thing should be added and the party should be towards the middle of the story.
This could be a good book and I would like to see more after it has been worked on more. I see that this is just a base for a great non-fiction biography.
Generally I dont like leaving a bad review for people unless its really carelessly written. I can see you have put a lot of thought into this and you are far from being done with it.
Keep going and dont give up.
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