I have known Matt Jenson, I think, since my junior high school days.Ā We grew up in the same town, we went to the same schools, we played in marching band together and went to church together.Ā He is a great guy, who I always enjoy hearing his contemplations and wonderings.Ā He is an avid reader, and unlreated, has a deadly hook shot on the basketball court.Ā Matt is an accomplished author, as well as a college professor of Theology.Ā Matt is many things, including, my friend.
Anywhere But the Suburbs
by Matt Jenson
There are occasional days when I heartily affirm with Randy Newman: āI love LA!ā More often, I hate it.
On Tuesday morning I flew back to Los Angeles, with its cars and concrete, its hurry and hustle and hassle. I had been in the Southeast for two weeks ā with good friends in Nashville and Washington, DC, and a long, meandering drive in-between. When I opened my car door late on the night I arrived in Tennessee, I was taken aback by the sounds of crickets and frogs, instead of the trains from back in suburban Orange County. Everything in Tennessee was green. I rode a lawn mower for two hours just to cut my friendās grass. He had that much grass.
It was even better as I wandered through the small towns of Kentucky and North Carolina. Iāve been reading Wendell Berry for a while, and like most of his readers, I want to live in Port William, Kentucky. Short of that, it seemed a nice idea to drive to unincorporated Henry County, to the town of Port Royal, on which Berry bases Port William. At dusk, I was driving along the river (āWatch out for the deerā, they told me), basking in the warm light of the end of the day as it shone on abandoned barns and run-down farmhouses. Why canāt I live here?
Iāve begun to realize that I am reading Wendell Berry poorly. To me, his novels have been an escape ā a thoughtful, literary escape, of course, a respectable one. Nostalgia for agrarian society is all the rage among us academic types. I am coming to realize, though, that Port William isnāt the romantic utopia that serves as my intellectual equivalent of comfort food. It is a home for a āmembershipā (Berryās word) who have to struggle to receive it in gratitude as their home. Port William is to its members as LA is to me.
This is how Port Williamās own Hannah Coulter put it near the end of her life:
āMost people now are looking for āa better place,ā which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned from his time in the army and the war. He saw a lot of places, and he came home. I think he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no ābetter placeā than this, not in this world. And it is by the place weāve got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven.
āI think of Art Rowanberry, another one who went to the war and came home and never willingly left again, and I quote him to myself: āSomething better! Everybodyās talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, donāt matter if it aināt nothing but a log pen.āā
Suburban Orange County is a lot more than a log pen; but if Iām honest, the one thing needful, the feeling good and being proud of what Iāve got in this home is one of the more difficult aspects of my life. My impulse is to change, and in this I find I am of a piece with the membership of Orange County. We donāt like something, so we change it, abandon it, throw it away ā because the whole point is that we are supposed to be happy.
But what if the whole point is that we are supposed to be holy? (Gary Thomas makes this argument about marriage.) And what if being happy were bound up with being holy? Funny. Iāve been a Christian for thirty years, and I am still convinced that dissatisfaction is only ever to be lamented, that is a problem immediately and at all costs to be solved. The dissatisfying suburbs become thus a place for me to flee, nothing better than a log pen. What if the loving Father wanted to conform me to the image of his Son, to make my holy, by teaching me to love the suburbs?
Dave and Lisa Everitt have referred to Cambodia, where they are missionaries, as Paradise for as long as I can remember. Iāve been there. Itās beautiful in parts, but also filled with the poverty and pain flowing from the atrocities of its recent history. Iāll never forget Daveās story of enjoying a swimming hole only to realize it was one of a string of perfectly round holes, courtesy of a flurry of bombs.
I donāt think itād ever occur to me to call Phnom Penh āParadiseā. But to Dave and Lisa, it is just that. Not because theyāre blind to the difficulty of living far from their loved ones and home culture, or because they have romanticized this corner of the developing world.
No, it is Paradise because it is what they have been given by God.
I suspect, too, that it is Paradise in faith and hope that what they have received from God cannot but be a paradise. And, I suspect that it has become a paradise over the years of loving, sustained attention they have given to it, as they have come to know and be known by the membership of Cambodia.
The difference is that my friends in Cambodia, and those in Port William, know themselves as bound to a place and, in muddled and inconstant ways, seek to live within the limits of where they have been given. Me, I keep thinking of greener grass ā of anywhere but the suburbs. On this point, I think I am wrong. I disagree with myself. I repent. Flannery OāConnor was right: āSomewhere is better than anywhere.ā
Tags: biola, cambodia, dave everitt, flannery o'connor, gary thomas, hannah coulter, henry county, kentucky, lisa everitt, los angles, Matt Jenson, nashville, north carolina, orange county, phnom penh, port royal, tennessee, washington dc, wendell berry