I love reading Nick Honrby's column, What I've Been Reading. He puts a list of books out, then interweaves them with his life. This week as I read Karen Halversen Schreck's, Sing for Me, it made me think more about the stories and work that has been created, and that still needs to be written. I have heard that Schreck started this work in college and has come back complete it now, some 30 years later. The characters, the lives, seem to be long felt, real and I would be shocked if she told me she didn't have a sibling with a severe disability.
The details of this story seem simple enough, romance, faith, a desire to sing "secular songs," and race. Having lived in Chicago and spent many a night in the long line to get into a dance club like, Circus or X-Caliber, I wondered at my lives, faith, pulsing music with a drink in hand. I don't go out at 2 AM anymore, mostly because that would require childcare and a willing partner, but I still sit with the questions of musical choice, how much I allow myself to laugh at belittling jokes or pretend I'm not too religious on Friday night and a believer Sunday morning.
This story is perfect for taking me out of my world, while really allowing me to experience my world. It is my family family too, their judgements, and the serious risk required to live outside others and inside ones own skin. Sing for me made me want to sing loud, to be the one person to stand up to terrorists, to do something that was about fighting for God, outside of conformity, of what's expected.
There is a sense that the characters are all doomed. The tension is great, as you might be beaten or just told by another, they are not interested. I want to tell them to stop fighting for love, but I can't. I can't do anything but hope they will take a little bus to a land without conflict (Utopia?), but barring that, they have to be together. People have to love and lose all because that is what keeps them alive to a relational God.
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