PAYBACK

PAYBACK: Debt and the Shadow Side of Life
By Margaret Atwood
O.W.Toad, Ltd, Toronto, 2008
ISBN 978-0-88784-800-1
Review by George R. Pasley

This is a fascinating book, which studies the anthropological, literary, sociological, judicial and even theological history of debt, monetary and otherwise.

For instance, researchers taught captive capuchin monkeys to trade pebbles for cucumber slices. Once all the monkeys were trained, the trainers began giving one monkey grapes instead of cucumber slices. When the remaining monkeys continued to receive cucumber slices, they acted out in numerous ways, including going on a hunger strike. Fairness was the issue here, and it evidently is written into the genetic code of social primates- so quite possibly, it is written into our own.

Or, why do some people use “trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer and others use “debts”? Atwood reports that Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, has only one word for both English translations (though she does not delve into either Greek or Hebrew).

In a bit of literary and cultural research, Atwood reports on the custom of sin-eating. Quoting Mary Webb (Precious Bane, 1924): “Now it was still the custom at that time, in our part of the country, to give a fee to some poor man after a death, and then he would take bread and wine handed to him across a coffin, and eat and drink, saying, ‘I give easement and rest to thee now dear man, that ye not walk over the fields and down the by-ways. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul.’” (p. 61)

Atwood’s book follows a fascinating rabbit trail dodging a dozen directions, but I found myself deeply engrossed in every wondering thought. My trouble came at the end, when after exposing the shadow side of debt- the things that happen when we don’t pay our debt, or the things that happen when debt cannot be repaid with money (as in, when revenge doesn’t work), Atwood comes to conclusion: pay it forward. She actually does a stellar job of explaining the limitations of justice, the symbiotic nature of lenders and borrowers, and the value of forgiveness. But in the end she offers environmental activism as a solution (though perhaps only as an example) and I found it insufficient- though perhaps it was only too narrow. Still, thought provoking and worthwhile. Good discussion for religion, philosophy, literature, and economic learners.

July 15, 2009
Ketchikan, AK

DOING VERBAL JUSTICE TO LIFE

DOING VERBAL JUSTICE TO LIFE

Last week, while I was on an errand, a man I scarcely know sat down, looked at me, and asked, “What are you reading these days?”

I was a bit startled by this. Yes, I read in public and I probably have become a local oddity, but I’m not sure that HE knows that. But I told him what I was reading lately, “Coming Home to Eat,” by Gary Paul Nabhan. It’s about the politics of food and contains some themes that relate to rural justice issues.

And then he told me what he was reading, “Gettysburg,” by Kent Gramm. And all of a sudden, I knew that he knew I was a reader because if a letter to the editor I wrote that made mention of “Lincoln‘s Greatest Speech,’ by Ronald C. White.

But we ended up trading books- he lent me Gramm’s, and I lent him a book I read the week before, “Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation 1861-1865” (by William Klingaman, a colleague from the congregation in Maryland that sent me to seminary). Trading books is not something I have done before- I ruin mine by making countless notes in them, and then guard them jealously- but somehow this seemed right. I may need to write a poem, or even an essay on the experience.

I have made notes about the book I borrowed, but I’ve had to discipline myself to make them on a scrap of paper I tore from the placemat at the restaurant where I normally eat my breakfast. The book is fascinating, if difficult, to read. It is not so much history as it is philosophy, and it kind of drives me crazy when Gramm drops a promising historical paragraph to pursue his philosophy. And he kind of goes around and around with his philosophy, but I’m getting the hang of it and like it more the further I read.

The book cover offers very scant clues to Gramm’s background, but his writing makes it obvious that he is very familiar with theology. So, I did an Internet search, and found out that yes, one of his degrees is an MDiv from Princeton (as is one of Ronald C. White’s). But one of my notes is what I want to share with you. It concerns a line of Gramm’s from page 125.

I have been fascinated with some of the recent recovery of the language and importance of lament in modern theology, and some of my poems have been an attempt to express honest lament, and “create room” where we are free to explore its possibilities.

Gramm was not really talking about lament when he described Union General Andrew Humphreys. But he was talking about the need to express our anger and consternation with the world as it is, and this is how he described a peculiar gift of Humphreys’:

“Best of all, he was known for his ‘distinguished and brilliant profanity,’ and was a prodigiously loud swearer. Sometimes what you want most of all is someone to do honest verbal justice to life.”

Well, there is more to the paragraph, but I thought that line particularly powerful.

George R. Pasley
November 19, 2002