There are types of evil, did you know that? There is material evil, that which causes suffering without reference to humans but gravely affecting humans. Disease and poverty, calamities of any natural sort. Material evils. These we can’t do anything about. We have to accept that their existence is a mystery to us. Moral evil is different. It is caused by human beings. A person does something deliberately to another person to cause pain and torment. That is moral evil. Now you came up here, Joe, to investigate your soul hoping to get closer to God because God is all good and all powerful, all healing, all merciful and so on. He paused.
Right, I said.
So you have to wonder why a being of this immensity and power would allow this outrage- that one human being should be allowed by God to directly harm another human being.
Something hurt in me, shot straight through me. I kept walking, my head down.
The only answer to this, and it isn’t an entire answer, said Father Travis, is that God made human beings free agents. We are able to choose good over evil, but the opposite too. And in order to protect our human freedom God doesn’t often, very often at at least, intervene. God can’t do that without taking away our moral freedom. Do you see?
No. But yeah.
The only thing God can do and does it all the time, is to draw good from any evil situation.
The preceding dialogue is found on page 253 in a novel I read this month, THE ROUND HOUSE. The author, Louise Erdrich, published it in 2012. She is an author that has escaped my reading radar until this novel was recently given to me by a family member. As stated on the back cover of the paperback she is the author of fourteen novels, volumes of poetry, children books, and a memoir of early motherhood. She is also the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Jane Ciabattari, Boston Globe, (also on the back cover) summarizes her feelings by stating THE ROUND HOUSE is one of her best-concentrated, suspenseful, and morally profound.
The setting of the story is in North Dakota in the spring of 1988 mostly on an Indian reservation. Louise Erdrich chooses the main character, thirteen year old Joe, to narrate the story. Joe lives with his mother, Geraldine Coutts, and his father, Basil, who is the tribal judge. Joe’s mother is attacked (raped) and barely escapes with her life. She is so traumatized she retreats to her bedroom and will not eat or communicate. Joe, confused as to the apparent slow paced police investigation and his father’s lack of success at bringing justice for his injured, traumatized mother, sets out to investigate on his own. Well, not quite on his own. He does have close friends that rally to work with Joe. His best friends Cappy, Angus, and Zach.
If you follow me at all you know that I am always amazed at the talent of the authors I have been blessed to read. I am personally moved by their word-smith tapestry their imaginative stories frame. Louise Erdrich puts her novel’s story on a multi-colored canvas of Indian reservation life and generational Indian culture laced with Catholic church life with all the attendant educational and liturgical trappings. The Round House itself is the center for many cultural events but in the first moments of this story it housed an evil tragic event. Erdrich’s genius is demonstrated by her decision to pen this novel through thirteen year old Joe’s point of view. Joe rises to a level of determination to defend his mother. Joe strives to find out what happened and who the guilty person was responsible for the attack. He and his family are devastated when the perpetrator (identified finally in Joe and his family’s mind) is not jailed. Thirteen year old Joe shares with his friend Cappy a possible solution.
As is my habit I will not clarify any further the course of Erdrich’s novel except to say her talent for storytelling is demonstrated by her word, sentence, and paragraph construct. She is a poet and her empathetic story telling is shown by her ability to write with feeling from the point of view of teenage boys. She takes the time to allow her readers, (me included), to somewhat understand how the raging hormones of newly promoted teens can confuse their actions and decisions. It is apparent they sometimes do not know which of their heads to pay mind to.
Joe has decisions to make. He and Cappy to a lesser extent, are at crossroads; difficult to know where to go. The opening sequence that I shared between Father Travis and Joe is one of his attempts to find clarity. He even explores confession from the Catholic point of view and with older Indian relatives, he listens to native legends and stories to help him understand. This story presents me the reader with a young man learning at the age of thirteen that by the end of the day he has to take responsibility for his action. I believe Joe finally knows that he has free will to act. The free agent concept Father Travis earlier introduced to Joe.
This month my Lighthouse reflections focus on free will. Recently I have been blessed to reflect with our 17, 16, 15 and 13 year old grandchildren face to face. The conversations have run the gamut from studies, possible career choices, leadership and aging, to how random life appears to be. I have learned to open up to them in slow motion. To my teenage grand children I might appear quirky when I share my belief that we all have free will and indeed on a conscious, unconscious, and or subconscious level we make decisions freely. Their eyes glaze when I explain other labels that can be used for the conscious (ego), unconscious(soul), and or subconscious (spirit).
I leave you with this. The month of June heralded the birth of a white buffalo. A buffalo that isn’t albino. It is reported that this baby buffalo has black eyes, hooves and a black nose. Very rare indeed. If I understand correctly some Indian cultures like the Lakotas believe the rare birth of a white buffalo portends imminent change, mostly good change. I shared this news with one of our granddaughters. Her response was, how random. I guess I won’t try to explain how this baby buffalo had free will to decide to be born with white fur!
Thank you for reading.
Be in peace and joy!
Mark