jayber crow, by wendell berry.

As I’ve already mentioned, my goal entering 2011 was to read 50 books. It appears that’s going to happen, because I’m not sure what transpired to make it so easy, but I read ten books in January. I obviously won’t keep up the ten books per month pace, but I do find it likely I’ll read so many books in 2011 that I won’t want to sort through them all at the end of the year to pick my favorites. If I did that, I’d feel terrible leaving so many great books out. Thus, more book posts!

Another reason I realize I need to do more book posts is how remarkably fortunate I was to read only amazing books in January. I suppose it’s not pure luck, part of being a bibliofile is spending lots of time thinking about books when you aren’t reading books, so I make educated guesses that I’ll like the books I read. Still, this was a great month!

First up in the higher frequency book posts, Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry.

“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.” – Jayber Crow

There are so very many books and movies set in small towns. Often, the small towns depicted are romanticized beyond recognition. Like airbrushed models on a magazine cover, it gets hard to tell you’re meant to be looking at something organic and real. Not so with Wendell Berry.

His tale of Jayber Crow and the small town for which he barbers is certainly romantic, but in the way real life is. Berry’s writing offers a picture of real people, with real heartbreak and ordinary foibles. The result is that this is the first book set in a small town that actually made a part of this city boy’s heart long to live alongside Jayber and his neighbors; to know everyone’s name, to share everyone’s joys and sorrows, to tolerate one another’s idiosyncrasies.

It’s also a story about learning to understand one’s place in the world. It’s a story of faith, theodicy, calling, doubt, and love.

It’s quite possibly the most unique love story I’ve ever read, and it’s certainly one of the most bittersweet.

Yet, as time passes, I think it’s the book’s interaction with the concept of ‘calling’ that will stay with me. It’s an area of thought I’ve done a fair bit of wrestling with myself over the last several years, with no small amount of fear and trembling. Jayber Crow was genuinely reassuring and inspiring to my tired heart. Jayber journeys through different understandings of calling, wondering where he fits, to discover that he is called to be a perfectly ordinary barber to a tiny, all but forgotten town. I found connections between Jayber’s tale and my own, and I hope to find more as I live more of my life. I hope to continue to see in Jayber’s story an assurance that I can never think my way toward answers, but must simply blindly live my way toward them.

I’ll leave you with my favorite excerpt from the book.

I said, “Well,” for now I was ashamed, “I had this feeling maybe I had been called.”

“And you may have been right, but not to what you thought. Not to what you think. You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out — perhaps a little at a time.”

“And how long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know, as long as you live, perhaps.”

“That could be a long time.”

“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”

As it is written, so let it be.