Start again as we mean to go on

I’m washing smoke from my kids’ summer clothes after our holiday travels. I sink raincoats into a soapy bucket and watch the water swirl and turn grey with the charcoal smoke of family barbeques and campfires. It makes me smile at the memories, but of course there has been worse smoke in the air, too, this summer. It’s been another bad year for forest fires.

Ottawa poet Jean Van Loon describes the sweet-bitter stink of charred wood. I pour away the ashen water, and her words catch in my throat.

When I was researching my first novel, I came across a newspaper article that described the appearance of a blue moon in Scotland, attributing the effect to smoke of huge Canadian forest fires that had drifted across the Atlantic. A blue moon is said to be a rare thing, but these large scale forest fires aren’t once in a blue moon anymore. As our climate changes, summers are getting hotter everywhere, and every spark more dangerous. We remember the images of ruin: Fort McMurray, Lytton, West Kelowna and now Jasper. Maybe this year, this burnt town will be the wake-up call. Maybe this time, when the smoke clears, we’ll see more clearly.

A strong message

One of the passages we will be sharing together in our church this month is the reading from the Letter of James which gives us the metaphor of the power of language and a forest fire. We read how our words can burn into the minds of others, bringing either blessings or curses. Or both. James warns us to be careful how we speak to each other and writes specifically about teachers. “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.”

This fall, I am teaching a writing course at the local university, and I have been choosing novel excerpts to share. Like the words we speak, the stories we share matter. I want to explore how writers make the world through craft and character and how story structure – order – matters.

I started this column with images of smoke and washing, but I could have chosen to start instead with the words from James or a description of my kids’ clean jackets hanging in the sunshine. Or their worries about the return to school. Or mine about standing in front of students. I could have started with the streets of Jasper and the terrible warning that remains in those empty spaces, then moved towards hope for change and renewal. Or started with hope then moved towards warning. Each ordering produces its own strong message. When we read – whatever we read – we should pay attention to order. James, who warns us to speak well, opens his letter like this: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy because you know that your faith produces endurance.”

May we order our days well and learn to see clearly.