This is the third of four reflections on L.L. Barkat’s fantastic book Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places that will run here daily until Sunday, January 10. Comment on each of the four posts between now and 6:00 p.m. Sunday and your name will be included in a random drawing to win a copy. Free books: Not a bad way to kick off 2010!

REFLECTIONS ON BEVERLY CLEARY AND STONE CROSSINGS

by Monica

I sat down to read in the midst of a mess. Primary-colored Legos, Tinkertoys (from two canisters), a library copy of The Patchwork Girl of Oz and a basket of unfolded laundry made the living room carpet difficult to see. At least the clothes were clean.

I sat down to read in the midst of another kind of mess. This thing I’ve been calling “loneliness,” repeated rejections, several years’ worth of emotional life to analyze and perhaps never figure out, and recurring sins make the past painful to remember.

This is how I sat down to read L.L. Barkat’s Stone Crossings–surrounded by clutter both external and internal. I also read the book having already experienced God’s far-reaching grace. Reading this book in the context of both mess and grace was, I think, appropriate.

In my childish fantasies, I sometimes wished for a personal Cat in the Hat with his handy mess-eating machine. God knows there was much to set in order in our home.
– L.L. Barkat, Stone Crossings, page 25.

Besides the state of my home and emotions, I read Stone Crossings in the same way I curled up with Ramona the Brave and Because of Winn-Dixie and The Great Gilly Hopkins–tears on the brink, heart in my throat, brows raised in anticipation over eager, unblinking eyes. All these books have touched deep places in my spirit, places that perhaps would have remained unknown to me were it not for these authors putting words to my life and experiences. I weep every time I read Ramona the Brave. I couldn’t read Because of Winn-Dixie in one sitting because its emotional impact was too strong to take all at once. I can’t get enough of Gilly. Where on my bookshelves would I put Stone Crossings? 

Touching covers with these.

Barkat placed this word here, that word there, and together the words brought a kind of spirit-articulation to me. Line after line in this book made emotional connection, and in the reading I felt understood and in good company. Katherine Paterson explains what I mean when she wrote of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books:

Cleary has the rare gift of being able to reveal us to ourselves while still keeping an arm around our shoulder. We laugh (ha ha) to recognize that funny, peculiar little self we were and are and then laugh (ahhh) with relief that we’ve been understood at last.
– Katherine Paterson, Gates of Excellence, pages 41-42.

Barkat, like Cleary, has this same rare gift. An arm around my shoulder. Understood at last. I sat down to read Stone Crossings with a history of relationships bruised, pulled back, cut off. I also have experienced deep, lasting, true relationships. This, too, is appropriate.

[T]his is how God primarily communicates to the world–through the common love of Christians as they move in relationship . . .
– L.L. Barkat, Stone Crossings, page 84.

In Stone Crossings I find what I most value in any book: internal connection. And all along, while in Barkat’s good company, I learn and learn again of God’s grace.

Monica, pictured here with her family, blogs at Know-Love-Obey God.