The Best Spiritual Writing 2013 by Philip Zaleski

The Best Spiritual Writing 2013 Reviews

• 
  Wright

  
  
  When I Was Blind
  By Edward Hoagland
  
  
  I was blind for a while, and walking in the woods was an adventure. The white bark of birch trees beckoned to me. I would stroll through cushiony dead poplar leaves or fountaining ferns like ostrich plumes as high as my chest. I could hear squirrels quarreling and veerys veerying. Wood sorrel grew underfoot, the leaves tart when you taste them. Bears fattened on beechnuts in the fall up here and pitcher plants and orchids could be found in a kind of suspended bog.
  
  
  When I was blind I listened to the radio scanner chatter softly, pulling in transmissions from the State Police, the Sheriff’s Department, the Border Patrol, the town Rescue Squad, and the hospital at the county seat. You could also hear several fire departments, the Fish and Game frequency that wardens called in on, the Civil Air Patrol, railroad dispatchers, and various ham channels that lonely civilians talked on. You might hear EMT personnel resuscitate a heart patient, panting over him on air; or a fire in progress, actually even crackling; or a cop chasing a car thief through the woods, but mostly highway crews gabbing with headquarters interminably.
  
  
  My neighbor trapped fisher, fox, and beaver in the swamp in season, shot venison, caught catfish, logged pulpwood, knew where the otters denned and the herons nested, where snappers could be dug out for a turtle stew, where a patch of lady’s-slippers flourished where any girl might pick a moccasin-flower for her prom. But he had medical bills, and no money laid aside till his social security kicked in, so he was a junkyard watchman for money. The man who owned the junkyard was a war veteran too and both men knew the old bootlegger paths through the swamp. The swamp was eight miles wide, and you could make a living limbing cedar trees and dragging them out for post-and-rail fencing or patio furniture, or from saw-log cherry wood or yellow birch and bird’s-eye maple in the higher spots. Japanese businessmen owned the swamp now, having bought it from Wall Street investors, who had bought it from the logging company who had worked it over when everybody was young. The logging company had employed the county’s jailbirds to cut tamaracks for telephone poles, plus any local who wanted to slug it out with the trees, hauling with horses as often as not, because of the braided streams. It was a good life until you broke a leg or got a rupture, and the logging led you into necks of the woods where nobody had trapped lately and you might nab a sixty-dollar bobcat overnight, half a month’s pay.
  
  
  When you are blind you can hear people smile — there’s a soft click when their lips part. Once I went to see a healer in the woods. “Ease up on milk and Tums. Are you centered with the Lord? Do you tithe? Are you asking Him for guidance? Is your daughter in trouble? I have patients who fall out of bed every night, their dreams are so bad. Smoke much? Lemme see your nails. Chew your nails? You pray?
  Farm paid for? Be tremulous before the Lord! I’ll pray for you, if you wish. But you wouldn’t want me spitting into your eyes, like Jesus did with the blind man. Am I right? Praise the Lord. Eat less. Unquietness eats at you. Stand underneath God. Get under His spotlight. No charge.”
  
  
  It used to be that the way you milked cows was you strapped a milking stool to your butt and wore it like a stiff set of bug’s legs sticking out for half the day. No more. In the old days here, before the economics of farming forced you to trundle each cow off to be ground into hamburger once her most productive years were past, you’d become friends with your cows, and you felt an intimacy with the personalities of each, milking by hand, not machine. Although you shot every hawk or owl you saw, you treated your cows better then.
  
  
  When I was blind I loved to ride trains, to sit in the Observation Car and chat with strangers, or in the dining car, the club car. When you can’t see, age is less of a factor, no skin tone or paunchy posture to go by. Voices wrinkle later than faces, and, emanating from inside, seem truer to the nature residing there, harder to educate in concealment or deceit. Voices register compassion, disdain, apprehension, confidence, or surprise more directly, if you’ve learned to listen.
  
  
  Rain squalls wet the spiders’ webs just enough to glisten so that I could see them, though trees remained a bit of a puzzle, like shapes viewed underwater. But I could hear better — the giggle of the flying loons, rattle of a kingfisher, a hermit thrush seeking an answer from distant softwoods, the passage of a large milk snake through the stone wall where it ate chipmunks.
  
  
  Another neighbor, who worked at the sawmill, had taught his dog to snatch food scraps out of the air when he, the neighbor, was having lunch and tossed them. But one day two of his fingers were sliced off by the saw and flew through the air and the dog caught and ate them. So I’m a part of him now for as long as he lives, said the guy.
  
  
  When your sight evaporates, your forehead seems to lower incrementally, appropriating the area formerly occupied by the eyes. Thus more brain space is created — as well as more time to think. You hope.
  
  
  Offered for auction today in town: cows, a llama, a guitar, a hare, a truck tire, a wheelchair. Who died? Play it safe, says the auctioneer, you’ll never get one cheaper when you need it. Afterwards the cashier puts a bottle of whiskey on the counter, signaling the end of the auction and a drink for everyone with money for a poker game.
  
  
  Blindness was full of second sight. I saw how the money economy had failed my neighbors after a lifetime of busy days, a web of energetic routines. Their house insurance had lapsed, the property tax bill was a yearly or-deal, but social security hadn’t yet kicked in. So fragile, though surges of mercy in other people did bubble up.
  
• 
  Rena Graham

  Too many pieces I had no interest in, but should probably check out other years in this series.
• 
  M.E.

  I still support the idea behind this yearly collection, but this year's collection was less than stellar. I read these books to expose myself to ideas that I have never thought of before, but want to think again. Usually, I find one or two gems. This year I didn't find any. My favorite piece was George Weigel's "All War, All the Time," about the espionage war between the Soviets and the Catholic church. It wasn't elegantly written, but it sure was interesting.
• 
  Evelyn

  I enjoyed reading this small volume of short stories. Inter-faith and multi-faith stories made the book even more interesting. I especially appreciated Sy Montgomery's story Deep Intellect about an encounter with an octopus at the New England Aquarium. Through this story I also fell in love with Athena the octopus. If we would only listen, we could learn about God and better understand God's depth through all that God has created.
• 
  Karen

  This is the first book in the series that I have read and I was a bit disappointed, for while I found most of the subject material, the prose often fell flat. I did enjoy however, the prose pieces by Kathleen Hill and Marilynne Robinson. Plus, the essay titled "Deep Intellect" by Sy Montgomery is one of the best nature essays I have read and at first seems misplaced in an anthology containing spiritual writing until one thinks about the deeper meaning of the piece.
• 
  Naomi

  All kinds of wonderful work - as any best of collection should have. Because of Prothero's editorship, there are pieces here for spiritual humanists, people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, and people of many faiths. That's quite a feat, and for the interplay between the texts best read with others who do not believe as you do.
• 
  Gail Jackson

  There were some amazing and interesting essays in this compilation. I picked it up at the library and started reading "Alien Intellect" which discusses the intelligence of octopuses and knew that I had to read more. There were a couple of essays I just couldn't finish and more than enough regarding Catholicism which is not really an interest of mine but overall I enjoyed it.
• 
  Susan

  Wide variety of essays, perfect for discussion. I especially liked the one about the octopus, which made me look at that creature in an entirely different way. The poems were also thoughtful.
• 
  Sally

  A mixed bag of essays and poems; most not outstanding, though some were interesting.