Ann Patchett's Bel Canto

In the end, says Patchett, it is neither politics nor religion that transform and inspire us, but art. More specifically, in her technicolor and lyrical novel, it is the music of opera. Here's the plot from the publisher's notes:

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different countries and continents become compatriots. Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion and cannot be stopped.

Here, the diva rules. When one of the generals in charge of the siege tries to deny Roxanne a box of sheet music, she says to the translator: "Tell him that's it. Either he gives me that box right now or you will not hear another note out of me or that piano for the duration of this failed social experiment." "Really?" the translator asks. "I don't bluff," Roxanne answers.

The story is, in the words of a New York Times reviewer, "a paean to art and beauty." The exquisite music the diva sings so elegantly brings both revolutionaries and captives to their most profound senses. Social stratifications melt away, ideologies evaporate, ethnic differences are replaced by the common language of music. The story gives hope that, despite our differences, we can capture our deepest selves and find a unity there. In this case, through music.

I love this story of human transformation, yet, progressive churchy type that I am, I wonder if it underestimates both politics and religion. Patchett contrasts great music--that of Respighi, Rossini, and the like--with inept, ill-fated revolutionary generals and a benign but innocuous priest. Not a fair comparison. What about the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, whose religious and political visions have, like the music in Patchett's story, inspired and transformed? So here's my (perhaps naive) hope: that despite their corrupted forms in today's world, the saner and more compassionate elements of both politics and religion can take their places alongside great art in ennobling and transforming the human heart.

The Magi

Smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season, the media were aghast: The Archbishop of Canterbury had said the story of the Magi is a myth that should not be taken literally. I wasn’t surprised by the Archbishop, but I was amazed and appalled by the secular media who just don’t get the approach we Christians take to our sacred texts: We're not all fundamentalists who take such stories literally.

For many of us the power of the Magi story lies not in historical reason, but in its rich symbolism that has managed to thrill so many artists. Think of paintings by Giotto and Rubens, poetry by Auden, Chesterton, Yeats, and Eliot, and stories by writers like O. Henry.

The Magi may be dubious as historical facts, but they bear rich insights into the strange ways of faith. They make good on the promise of Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.”

Because the Magi journey in darkness. They are looking for the Christ child, but they do not have exact directions. They cannot travel by day, and have only a tiny speck in the night sky to lead them. Darkness and danger are more a part of their lives than joy and worship. And yet they keep walking.

They’re not at all like the shepherds. The shepherds don’t have to rely on a mute star. They have a chatty angel who gives them exact directions to the child. Everything works out precisely as they are told. At the end, they run off to tell the story to astonished and admiring throngs. The shepherds’ story is one of angelic revelation, joy, and proclamation.

Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d be a shepherd. But the fact is, I’m more of a Magi. Maybe you are, too. If so, we’re both in good company.

This past year, some of Mother Teresa’s personal journal became public. She wrote: “When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”

I don’t know if Mother Teresa was a saint or not, but one thing seems clear: She was a Magi. She journeyed in darkness, but journeyed nonetheless.

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi” captures the harshness of the struggle here. In that poem, an old Magi looks back:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

This story of the Magi, perfect for a blustery January morning, illumines those moments when hope intersects with pain.

…set down
This set down
This

says the old Magi.

...were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

For Magi, in the larger fabric of life, birth is interwoven with death. This dynamic of change and growth sounds so romantic, looks so great on Christmas cards…until you go through it.

This past year, we’ve welcomed new children to our parish: Sophie and Ben and Kumari. All those giggles and sparkling eyes and squirminess—Can think of a better reason for joy? And yet, as their sleep-deprived moms will testify, their entrance into our lives brings a kind of death: Things will never be the same again. There are new demands, new sacrifices to be made for these children, things that might once have been possible are now on hold. In the larger fabric of our lives, birth and death weave themselves together. We are Magi.

And this past year, some of us journeyed into lives so much fuller and richer than we had previously imagined, yet that journey has meant letting go of the deadly illusions of addiction, and slowly, sometimes painfully learning how to live in a new way. Birth interweaves with death. We are Magi.

And for still others of us, the journey has meant the end of a relationship, the unexpected death of Manny, the loss of other loved ones either through death or separation. What these terrible losses will mean for us may not yet be clear. What is being born is not clearly seen. We are Magi who journey without a clear roadmap, with just barely enough light to guide us. Sometimes we journey with our knees wobbling and tears running down our face. But we keep going.

Maybe Dostoevsky overshot the mark when he said that “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams,” but still he was on to something. Something Magi know. The journey can be hard. Love costs. Finding the child costs.

And yet we would not trade the journey for anything. Not for a moment. Not for anything. Because we are Magi.

Adam Pertman's Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America

Great book if you're involved in an adoption or just interested in the ever-changing shape of the American family. Pertman summarizes the major shifts in adoption and their implications for American culture.

These shifts emerged largely in the 60s when sex and childbirth outside marriage were destigmatized. No more need to hide or lie; no more sealed records or altered birth certificates. In their place emerged the open adoption process now endorsed by most reputable agencies. Those years also introduced "getting in touch with yourself," a quest that might lead some adoptees to seek out their birth parents to learn about their first days on the planet and their own biological and medical makeup. Finally, the shifts also include the entrance into parenthood of many different folks--disabled people, middle-aged infertile couples, and gay lads like my husband and me--a move that will continue to trigger ethical and legal controversies.

Although Pertman is himself an adoptive parent, he manages to bring the various viewpoints of the adoption triad--adoptees, birth mothers, adoptive parents--into a rich and honest dialogue. Not an easy task because these viewpoints often conflict. (Case in point: assertions by adoptee rights advocates that adoptive parents are unwitting pawns in child trafficking who end up depriving adoptees of vital connections to biological parents and ethnic heritage.) He's a strong promoter of open adoption, and an equally strong critic of the greed and corruption in many parts of the current adoption system both here and internationally. Right on! But I wonder about a few things he says...

On the plane from Seattle the other day, I told the woman next to me Pertman's claim that birth parents and their children must reconnect with each other if only for the sake of their own mental and spiritual health. Birth parents, he asserts, "overwhelmingly want to be found." She then told me she had relinquished her son 37 years ago with no regrets or conflicted emotions, and today feels no need to reconnect. Her son could easily find her through Google, and although she would not refuse the contact, she's afraid he'd be disappointed that she's felt no compulsion to seek him out, no incompleteness, no lack of resolution. Is she repressing something? Though Pertman and others imply that she is, I doubt it.

In the same way that many, though not all, women who choose abortion can feel a genuine peace with their difficult decision, so a birth mother can feel a rightness about relinquishing her child. People are different. Same is true of adoptees: Some, but not all, may simply feel no need to reconnect with birth parents.

Another issue: Pertman suggests that many parents adopt internationally to dodge the birth parents who threaten their own role as "real" parents. He may be right about the dodge, but he misses the real reason behind it.

In fact, it's not insecurity about parenthood but the risk of financial ruin that international adoption alleviates.

Financially, open adoption often favors the birth mom. Over the course of her pregnancy, she can receive several thousands of dollars worth of medical and personal care from the adoptive parents, then decide at the last minute to keep her child. The adoptive parents then simply forfeit the money with nothing to show for it. (In our case, the total cost of adopting from Guatemala including two mandatory trips and lodging came to a whopping 30K. It was a lot, but not nearly what some adoptive parents have paid when a birth mom changes her mind and they have to start the entire expensive process over.)

Simply put: Not all adoptive parents can assume the financial risk that can be part of open adoption, and this is why some of us look abroad--not to shore up an insecure sense of ourselves as parents, but to stave off financial ruin. This financial risk is a problem for adoptive parents in open adoption.