Rachels' books

To Pete, Jane & Evelyn

I've recently had a birthday, and among the very lovely presents I was given were two books by authors whose Christian names (or forenames, as we're meant to call them now) are both Rachel. They both, for different reasons, captivated me - which you can tell because I who these days am a slow reader read them quickly.

The first is The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, whose other novels (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy) I also recommend. It is primarily set in 1988, with the final chapters 20 years later. The story revolves around the single-minded, arguably obsessive, Frank for whom the only worthwhile form of recorded music is vinyl and his shop in a run-down cul-de-sac in a cathedral city which is itself depressed and still bears the scars of wartime bombing. The remaining shops in the street are a florist, a Polish baker, an undertakers', a tattooist, a Catholic souvenir shop, and Frank's music shop. On the other side of the street are terraced houses in various states of disrepair.

All the while there are threats from a development company and racist gangs. It is a picture of a community under pressure from progressive and reactionary forces.

Frank is no musician, but he has inherited from his Bohemian mother both a love of music and a fear of relationship. However he has a unique gift - the ability to hear instantly what music every person needs. His world and the life of the street is profoundly changed when a woman in a green coat collapses unconscious outside the music shop. All the characters in the book have their own back-stories and carry their own scars. I won't spoil the plot, but content myself with saying that, as with Rachel Joyce's other books, it is ultimately hopeful and carries a message that redemption is possible though hard won.

At the moment Jane is reading it. I shall be interested to hear whether she was as captivated as I was.

The other book, which arrived out of the blue from my least "respectable" cousin, is Evolving in Monkey Town (now retitled Faith Unravelled). What a gift! It's by Rachel Held Evans (from whose blog I've previously quoted : Pain in the Offering). It's not a new book, published in 2010. It recounts her growing up in the southern states of America, and in particular Dayton, Tennessee, where her father went to teach theology in the conservative Bryan College. For one thing, she is an excellent writer. Dayton was the site of the famous 'Scopes Monkey Trial', staged to draw publicity to the small town. In 1925 John T Scopes, a secondary teacher, was prosecuted by the state for teaching evolution in a state school. The whole thing turned into a debate between 'Modernism' and 'Fundamentalism', between creationism and evolution, and gained worldwide notoriety.

This Rachel tells how she developed from knowing all the right Christian answers to sceptics' and seekers' questions to being open to accept the mystery of faith. She ends, "If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that serious doubt - the kind that leads to despair - begins not when we start asking God questions but when, out of fear, we stop. In our darkest hours of confusion and in our most glorious moments of clarity, we remain curious but dependent little children, tugging frantically at God's outstretched hands and pleading with every question and every prayer and every tantrum we can muster, 'We want to have a conversation with you!'

"God must really love us, because he always answers with such long stories."

I found the book invigorating and liberating. It helped me to understand my own journey and myself. As I commented to a friend who asked me how my summer had been: I suppose what reading Rachel’s book helped me see was, a. that I wasn’t a freak and b. that I do still have faith - which has been a considerable relief and a sort of liberation. My doubts and questions are by no means fatal. Phew!

Give Gatlin a break

I suspect a lot of people, including journalists, will be very surprised at whom they see welcomed to heaven. As Shakespeare has Portia declaring, mercy is an attribute of God himself. Therefore,
"Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

On Saturday evening, after watching a football match which proved that women's sport could be just as good as men's (pace Dominic Lawson), we caught the World Athletics 100 metre final and witnessed both the best and worst of responses to a race. You'll scarcely need telling that Justin Gatlin came first, followed by a whisker by Christian Coleman and Usain Bolt. People were understandably disappointed that the extrovert and brilliant Bolt hadn't won his final competitive race. However, the tragic thing was that apart from Bolt and Coleman no one had the grace to congratulate Gatlin. The London crowd booed and the commentators prefixed his name with some qualification like "twice banned drug cheat" Gatlin. That was repeated in every subsequent news report I heard on the BBC, and I gather that the booing was repeated at the medal ceremony. I don't condone drug-taking to enhance performance, not that I have illusions that my opinion matters! Nor do I doubt that in one way or another it's more prevalent than we're told. But is it even true?

Photo: Telegraph online

However he had served his sentence and, without doubt, is now as rigorously tested for illegal doping as any athlete on earth. Bolt was magnanimous in defeat. He after all came third. The general view seems to be that he had not recovered his previous Olympic form and so overtook Coleman in neither the semi- nor the final. Gatlin, meanwhile, surpassed himself achieving his season's best when it mattered. But the British public, egged on by the media, is an unforgiving animal. Maria Sharapova has been similarly branded for her use of a newly banned drug. And Chris Froome, the gritty Kenyan/British cyclist, fails to receive the plaudits he deserves, partly, in my view, because of Sky Cycling's dubious history in the pharmaceutical department.

And so we have the sad spectacle of athletes who have served their sentences for past misdemeanours branded as cheats. There is, it seems, no room for redemption. Justin Gatlin, as well as striving for the top, has also been spending his time educating young Americans about the folly and danger of doping. For a very informative article on the facts of case, I recommend this short account from one of our top sports lawyers: Mike Morgan, Gatling Article, which leads me to question the very word, "Cheat" - which is frequently used. It seems to verge on the libellous. Even so, as Gatling himself has said this weekend: “I’ve served my time and done community service. I’ve talked to kids and inspire them to walk the right path. That’s all I can do. Society does that with people who make mistakes and I hope that track and field does that too.”

So why, I wonder, are we so slow to acknowledge that a debt can be paid? I suspect it might be because we lack the divine quality of mercy. Which according to Portia is bad news for all of us. If we don't have it, what call can we have on mercy dropping as the gentle dew from heaven? We run the danger of a life and death ban.

PS I've just seen the latest news that Sara Errani, the Italian who reached the Paris Open Tennis final, has been suspended for an absurd drugs offence which seems to have been caused by entirely accidental food contamination (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/40854182). Bonkers.