Cave Art at Its Finest

I have a confession to make. I work for a church. There, I said it. I have for thirteen years…my secret (deeply conflicted) love affair with institutional religion hidden away from the eyes of the world because I work with people who come here as refugees so it seems like I’m a social worker. Well, I’m not. I am a church worker. My church has this really fabulous library, and I decided recently to give up Tik Tok for Advent and start reading the books in the library instead. I know painfully little about Christianity (it’s ok, I worked for a Muslim school for seven years and know even less about Islam…maintaining ignorance against overwhelming odds is a special skill set I have), and I decided that instead of soothing myself with TikTok which is becoming less soothing over time, that I would start reading Theology.

So I had decided that already when I passed by Jim Crace’s book Quarantine in the free library near my house. You read the first cover descriptive sentence which says that it is a “retelling of Christ’s fabled forty day fast in the desert,” and normally that would be enough to make me drop it like it was hot and walk away from the book bin as fast as I turn the volume down on the Christian radio station I was just playing when my partner gets in the car (unless it’s Josh Groban or MercyMe, and then that shit needs to be blared, audience be damned). However, the front cover of the book also had the words “Booker Prize Finalist” which redeems it from being cast in the lot of “The Red Tent” (a book I also haven’t read but have heard others judge from afar)

There is no Booker Prize Finalist that doesn’t merit reading. One of my all time favorite books, “The English Patient” won the Booker in 1992 and should also have won “worst movie ever made” in 1996, but you can’t blame the author, Michael Ondaatje for that. He didn’t cast Vodelmort as the Romantic Hero. Someone else did.

So I took Quarantine home and started reading it. Wow. It is so well written. It makes me think maybe I am a literary snob and should stop being lazy and grab for some higher brow works, but the thing about it is that his writing is so clear, and so wildly patient. I mean, not much at all happens except for 5 people (one of them, Jesus) come to this barren landscape to put themselves in caves for a month to fast and pray and hope for miracles when they run into 2 other people. Mostly it is about the scrabble to find food and water and what happens to your body when you sit in a cave for 30 days and don’t give it any food or water, and the writing is just gripping….I mean riveting. You never knew that sitting in a cave doing nothing except starving and praying could be so freaking interesting, and so I was really excited because you see, this is the first book I have ever read about Jesus. No, I haven’t read the Bible, although I do enjoy googling Bible Passages for Specific Needs. Here’s one:

Bible Verse for a Party, Proverbs 31:6

“Let beer be for those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish!”

I could google these things all day…so I was excited to read about Jesus…because Crace makes flicking scorpions off your mildewy shin riveting so imagine what he can do with the Messiah. I mean, his narrative capacity is already transfiguring so when Jesus gets out of his cave to help people, I mean, this is going to be incredible, life changing, shocking…I eagerly turned every page awaiting miracles with as much ardor as the badu in this book twisted his hair and longed for the divine. (Spoiler alert!)

It doesn’t happen. There is a lot more sitting in a cave in the book than Jesus fixing things which is honestly, really interesting. I think it’s intentional. It’s like META! The book puts you in the place of waiting, of fasting, of quarantining, and then it doesn’t deliver or if it does, it doesn’t deliver what you think or hope it’s going to deliver, it delivers something else….that is unexpected, confusing, maybe even a little off putting…but completely unforgettable.

I so didn’t know what to think about this book so I decided to read what other people had to say about it and found that fascinatingly a whole lot of people wrote reviews and synopses of the book saying that this and that thing had happened that is in keeping with the Biblical character of Jesus, when IT DIDN’T! That is also fascinating. I was waiting for Biblical Jesus to do his thing, and then it was so inspiring and amazing but but HE DOESN’T.

The books end this way too, with the promise of reporting suspicious miracles from an entirely untrustworthy narrator. And so 2,000 years later, it continues to happen on Goodreads and tons of other book sites. We see the miracles we want to see, but maybe we are missing something else, something that is a bit more complicated to be found in the details of stillness, the details of the wanting rather than in the resolution of desire.

Fascinating. One of the most interesting reading experiences I have ever had. I don’t even have silly pictures or dumb things to say about it. That’s how unusual and well written it is. I know I am being vague, but just borrow the book from me, and see if you agree with what I’m saying. I won’t blare MercyMe music at you while you are walking away with the book.

Yes, yes I will.