The Great Good Thing
I’ve had The Great Good Thing on my shelf for a while—one of those books you intend to read but never quite do. Andrew Klavan’s earlier work, The Kingdom of Cain, had a disruptive effect on me, permanently shifting how I perceive the quiet messages buried beneath art and story.
I approached this book with more than curiosity; I had a sense of hope. I thought that if a writer could so clearly change my view of art, perhaps he could show me how to see God, too.
That isn’t what happened—at least, not in the way I expected.
Klavan’s conversion from secular Judaism is stubbornly personal. I went looking for a map—a reproducible path to follow—but discovered that such a thing cannot exist. It isn’t that he fails to explain himself; if anything, he explains his journey too well. Every intellectual turn and subtle nudge felt so specific to his own life that it became clear this outcome belonged solely to him.
You cannot borrow his conversion.
Thinking about this, a scene from Between Two Fires kept rattling around in my head. When the old knight, Thomas, asks the girl why she didn’t appear in a way he would recognize, her answer is simple: “I had to come so you would find me.”
That feels like the heart of Klavan’s story. It isn’t a set of directions, but a specific alignment—something arriving in the exact form required for one specific person to follow.
Maybe that’s the frustrating part. Or maybe it’s the entire point.
Notes From The Book:
God is not susceptible to proofs and dis-proofs. If you believe, the evidence is all around you. If you don’t believe, no evidence will ever be enough.
Oh the soul! The human soul! In the suburbs of fiction, she is forever dying.
The world has no beauty of it’s own. The beauty of the world is created in the human experience.
The point is not to “see” the world, the point is to experience it. To know it’s shape from without and within.
The genesis of belief is no disproof of it. The truth remains the truth no matter how you come to find it.
Jesus had to die, because we had to kill him. It was either that of see ourselves by his light as the broken things we are.
William Blake believed The Bible is the great code of art.
Every good thing we know would be lost to us if they weren’t written down by a sinner with a pen.
The writing life is brutal on a wandering mind.
What was madness but the burden of genius in a world of fools.
Sometimes you just have to play through the pain.
Gloom and despair are not the room-mates of the brilliant and wise.
Everything useful that can be done in the world can be done with joy.
On the topic of church: The services are pretty, but I can’t stand the tuna casserole of it all.
The 5 points of Andrew’s Faith Conversion:
- The Truth of Suffering
- The Wisdom of Joy
- The Reality of Love
- The Possibility of Clear Perception
- The Laughter at the Heart of Life
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
thedorianroark
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