Category Archives: Books – by Chuck Fager

Peering Into the Heart of Darkness — And Its End

I had (& have) fond feelings for libraries, and at first glance, the one at Regis seemed a fine specimen: well-lighted, relatively new, with many long open shelves. Open shelves of books to me embodied freedom of thought and learning, and its liberating possibilities.

But something didn’t jibe with my sentimental notion. Behind the reference desk, my eye was caught by a large area enclosed by heavy mesh metal partitions, and with a locked gate. Inside were more books; I could see the shelves through the mesh. Were these antiquities? Precious manuscripts of historic value? They didn’t look like that.

No. My question to a cheerful librarian got a straightforward answer: this enclosure was for books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum: the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.

I stared at it in fascinated horror: of course I had heard of the Index. It was hundreds of years old. Where the Church was part of or protected by governments, it went hand in hand with censorship.

My first, adolescent thought was that it must include the books about sex. True enough, authors such as Gide and Balzac, thought to be peddlers of lasciviousness, were on it. But The Index was much more concerned about the mind than the loins, with stamping out heresy more than lust.

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New: A Religious Autobiography From “Interesting Times”

My friend & colleague Stephen Angell read my new book “Meetings,” and here’s what he said:

A vivid, lively, kaleidoscopic self-portrait of a fascinating Catholic-turned-Quaker journalist, writer and activist. Chuck Fager’s autobiography is one of the best that I’ve seen of an aspiring nonviolent revolutionary’s Life in the Sixties. (The early seventies are covered, too, in which he and other radicals took a more conservative turn.) Fager seems to be everywhere, providing revealing insights from interviews with Phil Berrigan and E. F. Schumacher, among others. He also provides wonderful portraits of Quakers who made their mark on the world and who deserve not to be forgotten, Sam Levering, Morris Mitchell, and Louis Alger, among them. Even topics such as “how I came to love the Bible” are presented in a sprightly and thought-provoking fashion; one of his unforgettable characters, the Prophet Jeremiah, hasn’t been alive in thousands of years!

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Yes, There Is A Santa Claus Archetype: I’ve Seen Him, Been Him

What kind of archetype is Santa Claus? One psychologist says he is the carrier of deep memories of “the Good Father.” Most of us, even many who had overall “bad childhoods”, can summon memories of times, moments, when a father figure was good to us: comforting, bountiful in comfort and generous in things we wanted as well as what we needed. Indeed, the rarer these occasions were, the more tenacious can be the memories.

Others note that Santa’s character accords with various ancient gods: his knowing all our “lists” of hopes; the ability to get all around the planet in a single night; even his ample belly bespeaks abundance and generosity.

Also, he is innocent; we only see him in this time of giving; he asks only that we be good, without getting very specific, or judgmental about our shortcomings. And beyond all the merchandising, we know that even tiny, homemade gifts from him can be as magical as the latest high-end gadgets. Or if we don’t know that, when we learn it, he will still be there.

My own experience this fall points to one more feature, perhaps the most marvelous in these troubled times, verified again and again: it turns out that there seems to be one white man that most black Americans do trust (maybe the only one): not me, but the Santa I have passingly embodied. If he too has “white privilege,” his mission is to give it all away, then make more, for more giving next time.

Santa-Dont-ShootSo I’ve been humbled each time by this repeated recognition: for one thing is clear to me, Chuck Fager, is that I do not live up to that Santa Claus archetype. (And I shall not impersonate it much longer: that fateful, long-delayed Monday visit to the barber, and return to incognito status, is coming again very soon.) But I’m grateful to have had the chance to see that this larger figure is still active.

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More Reading: Take A Bite Of The “Wisdom Fish”

In late 1992, I was earning more than I ever had. Yet every week I felt the urge to dump it all, move far away and do something else. I also often found myself asking, “So what?”

When you get to the “So what?” part of life, at whatever age – whether you know it or not, or use the same words–you’re looking for Wisdom.

But “where,” to quote an earlier seeker, “is Wisdom to be found?” (Job 28:12)

One place I looked for it was in the Bible. Others may find it in different sources; this is where I looked.

One reason was that for me the “So what?” question had been asked more urgently, wrestled with more memorably, and expressed more tellingly than I ever put it, in one phrase from a short book more than two thousand years old.

This phrase is, or should be, familiar to us all:

“‘Vanity of vanities,’ saith the Preacher, ‘all is vanity and a striving after wind.’”

For many of us, a time comes when reading a verse such as this, in the first chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, is like having something reach out and grab you by the throat.

One result of my wrestling is a short book. It’s based on a series of lectures I gave at William Penn House in Washington DC in 1992.

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Take An End-of-Summer Break: Read Quaker Mysteries

The goal was peacemaking between evangelicals and liberals. But then a rightwing televangelist turns up dead, and a gay Quaker activist is the prime suspect. Militants from all sides gather . . . and suddenly, amid old Civil War monuments, Friends are thrust onto the front lines of a deadly new kind of civil war . . .

As a reporter, I’ve covered many battlefronts in the current “culture wars.” And as readers of this blog know, the real-life drama just keeps on coming. And it makes for compelling fiction too.

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