Reading in Place

The majority of the last 2 weeks found me in New Mexico, mostly in the Santa Fe area. I spent a little time, on my own and with my husband after he joined me, exploring the area. It is wonderful! Moderate, dry and lovely.

During our time, we visited the cathedral in Santa Fe, the Taos Pueblo, Kit Carson's home, and the Sandia Mountains. I loved all of these places, but I loved them even more after reading Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

I started this book several years ago when the Neland Women's Book Club read this title. I got about halfway through it and ran out of time (this happens to me frequently enough, which you might know if you've read earlier postings!). I always meant to come back to it. I came back to it this week, and I remembered very little from the earlier reading! I think I'd been rushing through in an effort to get to the end, comprehending less than usual.

This time around, I started again from the beginning. The book is beautiful, and the priests, Father Latour and Father Vaillant, are the kind of missionaries I always wanted to be. I've had a strong attraction to mission work all of my life, and if I ever did it for a longer period of time, I'd want to be like these men--dedicated, loving and becoming part of the community.

This is not to say they are perfect. Father Latour has a love for material things, and his dream, almost obsession, of building a cathedral is something I don't entirely understand. Why bring European architecture to a mission field in the New World? However, having seen the cathedral, I can appreciate the inclination to build something beautiful but simple, in keeping with the field where he was stationed. Father Latour's character was based on a real-life priest, who played a big part in building the existing cathedral.

He also has trouble forming deep connections with new people. That strikes me as a very real issue for any person in ministry. At some point, many of us feel as though our lives are "full" enough, and don't so much need more people in our lives. This, of course, misses the point that others may need someone in their lives, and I may be just the person to fill that need.

Father Vaillant is a wonderful character. He is earthy, passionate and temperamental. Yet his deep love of people opens their hearts to him. He is also open to God's guidance, no matter where it may bring him.

Cather, though sometimes bound in the language of her time (this book was published in 1927) had a great respect for the culture and spirituality of both the Catholic priests and the native Americans in her book. She also imbues the story with a strong sense of history--the priest arrives in the "wild west" and watches it become more and more "civilized."

Episodic in nature, this novel is different from most of the fiction that I read. So often the plot structure of the novel is the driving force. This book is an examination of character, two lives in particular. This makes for a different reading experience than something that starts with a problem and ends with a resolution. In some novels this episodic nature would lead the reader to lose interest in the story. Cather's great beauty and sympathy, as well as the rich history she alludes to, makes this novel interesting from start to finish.

A side note to the novel is Kit Carson. He shows up frequently in the book. We visited his former home in Taos, and learned a bit about his history. He was a well respected frontiersman, a real mountain man who spent a good part of his life moving around the independent western states. He was idealized in his time, made into a sort of folk hero. Cather portrays him in a very positive manner as well. It is interesting to consider whether this was the influence of her times or the truth of the matter.

In an earlier moment of enthusiasm and idealism, I promised to read both Cather's book and Tony Hillerman's The Blessing Way. I started this one first, but my husband needed a book, so I passed in on to him and soldiered on with Death Comes for the Archbishop. He (a much faster reader than myself) read The Blessing Way. I asked for his opinion of it so that I could report on it in some way, so here goes: "It was a quick read, with easy words." He meant this as a joke, but my limited experience with the first chapters tells me that he's right, in a good way. Hillerman explores the rituals and customs of this particular Indian tribe, and he turns them into a good setting for a mystery. I hope to read more of it sometime!

So, I recommend these books for anyone heading to New Mexico soon. They have enriched my experience of the area.