Meeting in the Margins
Earlier this week, I was working on a post about “what is spirituality” when I found myself writing about my dad. I wasn’t initially surprised because I think about my dad every day. Then I remembered: he died 3 years ago this week. That loss, like so many major losses do, threw me into a tailspin that I still haven’t completely journeyed through.
Last week, I finished Kelly Bishop’s new memoir, The Third Gilmore Girl. I found her experience to be enlightening and timely. When writing about the death of her husband, her beloved pets, and her mom, she says that they “left.” Not that they died; they left. Of course, grief counselors will tell you the importance of not using euphemisms to describe death but rather to use language that reflects the reality of the situation. I get that. And yet, there’s something so true and real about “left.” My dad isn’t coming back in the way I knew him. He did leave on Sunday, February 6, 2022, and he does come back in ways I never expected.
Enter my dad’s books. Yes, another post about books. I am my father’s daughter, after all. As I was writing that post about spirituality, I found myself writing about my dad and the differences in our reading habits. Sure, we both read books about the Divine. We both went on own silent retreats annually. We both would take stacks of books with us on retreat.
So, when my dad left on February 6, 2022, I never expected to meet him again in his books. I wrote what follows on my old blog, “A Spiritual Academic Life,” in May 2022, three months after I held his hand for the last time.
Reading it now, I see the seeds of “Mundane Wisdom.” Connections with things beyond ourselves sometimes come in the smallest packages, like marginal notes.
May 2022
Grief is full of surprises. Aside from the expected, “Sorry for your loss,” “This is heartbreaking,” “My sympathy,” and “You’re in my thoughts and prayers,” a handful of words caught my attention.
“After my parents died, I found that I came to know them in a new way.” These words didn’t make sense to me in the weeks after my dad died. Three of my colleagues, who are Jesuits, offered these reflections to me as they offered their sympathy and compassion. The prayer and spiritual lives of Jesuits inspire me – they always have. I took careful note of their words.
I longed, and still long, for connection to my dad. I miss him every day. Much to my surprise, his books are how I connect to him now, and I’m coming to know him in a new way. My dad and I were on such similar paths, close in ways that father-daughters can be close, but in deeper ways that I’m just learning how to articulate. His books, particularly his notations in them, are helping me do that.
My dad loved to read. I first noticed that when I was in graduate school and he was nearing retirement from his first career. We’d be on vacation, or I’d be home from school, and he’d always have a thick, small-print theological book within his reach. I longed to read his theological books. While I was deep into rhetorical theory in PhD coursework, my dad was reading – for fun – books on the Biblical and historical Jesus, such as the multi-volume A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (he brought that on a family trip to Disney World and read it poolside). Those books made me miss my undergraduate days when I took theology courses and wrestled with questions not from a rhetorical perspective but from a sacred space, one that yearns to be connected to the divine. I missed that work, deeply.
When he read, he always sat upright, his eyes cast down and head ever so slightly tilted up to ensure he read through his bifocals. Yellow highlighter in hand, he was ready to remember. Pen or pencil in his shirt pocket, he was ready to question.
When my dad was in his 50s, he told me he was going back to school for his masters in lay ministry. I was thrilled. We would be in graduate school together, although in different states and different programs. He moved through his masters program, I worked on my PhD. The day I defended my dissertation, he completed his master’s exams.
As the years went on, I moved into my spiritual life with more intent and formal study through spiritual direction training and by attending silent retreats, an experience I shared with my parents who attended their own annual retreats. Retreats had become part of our family culture, and so, too, had spiritual and theological conversations and dialogue.
Despite these experiences my dad and I shared, our book choices always seemed to differ. Every time I’d stop by my parents’ house, my dad would have new books added to his growing mountain of books next to his living room chair. Those titles baffled and intimidated me. They were deep theological dives into scripture, whereas my spiritual journey was taking me in another direction to Mate Gabor’s When the Body Says No and Jeffrey Davis’s Tracking Wonder.
Weeks after my dad died, my mom invited me to over to go through my dad’s book collection. I was shocked. My dad and I had the same books. He even owned books on my to-buy list. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Serene Jones’s Call It Grace. Books on St. Ignatius of Loyola. Multiple books by Joan Chittister.
A sample of my dad’s book collection.
I brought a pile of his books home. I hesitated to start reading right away because reading them felt like opening a new chapter in my relationship with him (pun not intended, but there it is). My dad’s books were his sacred space, his form of prayer and meditation. We never exchanged books when he was alive, though he always did with his close friends who were nuns and priests of similar progressive thought. I found myself on the threshold of a new doorway into my dad’s life. The Jesuits were right.
And, wow, were they right. The first book I read from my dad’s collection was Serene Jones’s Call It Grace. I’d heard Dr. Jones on an episode of On Being a few months earlier and was struck by the power in her words. She’s a progressive theologian who tackles racism from that perspective, and her interview resonated with me in unexpected ways. It was an honest, raw, vulnerable look at her own whiteness. I was pretty surprised and proud that this book was on my dad’s bookshelf.
And the book didn’t sit there collecting dust. He read it, cover to cover. I audibly gasped when I paged through the book and saw marks from the familiar yellow highlighter and pencil notations – he really read this book. He studied it. He embodied it.
I was a little nervous to read on once I saw the notations. Reading them felt like a violation of my dad’s life. My notes in my spiritual books are personal and private. They are meant for my own growth and reflection. Reading his notes felt like reading his diary. What would I find? Was I ready to see this side of my dad? What side would I be seeing, anyway? And why was my curiosity so piqued?
My dad lives on in his book notations. As I continue reading Call It Grace, I pour over the words Dad highlighted, wondering, why did he write this note? Did he see himself in this line? We notate books the same way. Underlining key passages, starring paragraphs in the margins, handwritten notes strewn about the margins, barely legible to anyone else, perhaps even to the notator themself. Many of the things he underlined are the same things I would underline if I read the book for the first time — the main points, key takeaways. We grappled with the same questions.
“Call to action.” Thanks for the reminder, Dad.
Yet, he made notations that I never would have thought to mark, and they resonate with questions I’ve been grappling with. These notations have brought up a new perspective and raised questions for me that have helped me heal. Even the book itself, Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World, summarizes what my life has felt like for quite some time, even before he died. Of all the books I chose from his personal, surprisingly large, library, I chose that. Of all the books I chose to pick off my own bookshelves, I chose that.
These notations read like love notes now. Love notes to me, an unexpected audience, and love notes to himself and the communities of people he cared for deeply. I can see his own softening heart and attitude in the marked words, almost as if the highlights trace the transformation he was undergoing – confronting racism and working hard to change a church institution he loved and wanted to heal. I see the annotations of a man of faith carrying out the true words of the Bible, not of dogma or structure. That’s my dad. My dad. His highlights fill me with such pride.
I’m meeting my dad in the margins, crossing time to be with him. His books were the last place I thought I’d learn more about him. They’re an unexpected meeting place that grounds my dad’s past self with his spirit, an invitation for me to learn more about what he valued, questioned, and wanted to remember. My world is fractured since my dad left it. I’ve been trying to find meaning for almost three months now. My heart pangs looking at some of the notes. He must have been struggling to find meaning. Looks like we have that in common.
