Popular Music from Vittula: a novel, by Mikael Niemi
(translated from Swedish by Laurie Thompson)
While this short novel is mostly a coming-of-age tale for two boyhood friends who grew up in Vittula, a town near the Finnish-Swedish border, I enjoyed it both for its evocative imagery of life within the arctic circle, and the role that Laestadianism plays in the lives of the two main characters. Niila is the son of an emotionally and physically abusive Laestadian preacher. Matti, who is also the voice of the narrator, is his best friend. Matti is not a Laestadian.
As a third generation American of Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish ancestry, the occasional sauna and lefse is as close as I get to rediscovering my roots! From my perspective, the world presented in Niemi's novel seems very far away. Yet while I read it I couldn't help but feel haunted by images which evoked vivid memories of childhood. Perhaps this haunting is not entirely coincidental, as I recently found out from a relative that my ancestors originate from this very region of Finland and Sweden.
The wedding banquet chapter reminded me of the strong black coffee, hearty rieska, and earthy camaraderie that existed at family events growing up. The portrayal of the mother-in-law as a woman whose purpose was to force the guests to eat and eat until they could eat no more --and then eat a few more things-- recalled to mind the important role that food played in hospitality. The wedding banquet concludes with the men taking an intense saunas where, "the steam was as merciless as a Laestadian sermon." (p. 122)
Seeing Laestadianism through Matti's eyes left me with a "grass is greener on the other side" reaction. Growing up as a mainstream Lutheran, Matti's father warned him that "[i]t was particularly important not to brood about religion. God and death and the meaning of life were all extremely dangerous topics for a young and vulnerable mind, a dense forest in which you could easily get lost and end up with acute attacks of madness. You could confidently leave that kind of stuff until your old age, because by then you would be hardened and tougher, and wouldn't have much else to do. Confirmation classes should be regarded as a purely theoretical exercise: a few texts and rituals to memorize, but certainly not anything to start worrying about." (p. 176) While I wouldn't go that far, I was struck by the mirror image of Laestadian spiritual excess painted so starkly.
"Life is a vale of tears." I don't know if that idea is primarily Laestadian or primarily Finnish, but it is an important theme that pervades the novel. While the novel is not unhappy, or depressing, life in Vittula is hard and rough, and pleasure, while obtainable, is always understood within the context of suffering.
PUBLISHER: Seven Stories Press. New York. 2003. ISBN: 1-58322-523-4
KEYWORDS: Fiction, Sweden, Finland, Laestadianism
Showing posts with label laestadianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label laestadianism. Show all posts
A Journal on Doubt
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31.8.02
A Journal On Doubt, by Bennett Wade Kilpela
A Journal On Doubt, by Bennett Wade Kilpela leaves me profoundly ambivalent. While his openness allows us a sometimes touchingly intimate look into his personal demons as he struggles to make sense of his deep-seated doubt in conservative, evangelical Christianity, the longwindedness of his manifesto and the almost neurotic way in which he swings and leaps from one somewhat shallow conclusion to another left me wishing for less length and more depth. This work could definitely use a good editor who's willing to cut chapters and pages of repetitive entries, distilling and highlighting some of the truly moving moments of self-discovery within the text.
If you're looking for first-person narratives by people leaving Christian fundamentalism behind, there are much more well-written stories out there. (One that comes to mind is http://www.theheretic.com, which unfortunately is no longer online.) What drew me to Kilpela's story, however (and what kept me reading) was that he and I share a common background and a common struggle, although we've dealt with it in different ways.
Both Kilpela and I were raised in the ultra-conservative, pietist sect called the Apostolic Lutheran Church of America, and both of us left it for greener pastures shortly after confirmation. Both of us have struggled with extreme cases of doubt in the childhood version of the faith, trying to reconcile it with what we perceive as its deficiencies, brought to light by the modern worldview. While this seems very typical in the stories I've read online of people who've left fundamentalism, I think that it reveals a great strength and a great weakness in fundamentalism in general --it is able to inspire deep feelings of loyalty and commitment, but also creates a great sense of cognitive dissonance when confronted with compelling contradictory truths from the outside world.
What makes Kilpela's story unique is his unwillingness to ever make a complete break with the basic fundamentalist propositions he was raised with. While I actually self-identified as an atheist for awhile before having the existential spiritual experience that reconnected me with the Christian faith in a liberal-leaning, post-modern way, Kilpela hangs on by the edge of his fingernails, though despair, depression, divorce, bankruptcy, and more. While he doubts aplenty, Kilpela never repudiates --he's too afraid of hell-fire to do so. Thus his eventual transformation is lesser than it might have been had he actually hit rock bottom in terms of the inadequacy of his prior formulation of Christianity.
The bottom line of Kilpela's story is this: before his period of doubt he demanded nothing less than a religious formulation that was totally unassailable by any logical argument. Now he's willing to accept that no position is air-tight, and calls a truce with ambiguity by making a "bet" on what "makes sense" to him. This "modified Pascal's wager," while not eliminating Kilpela's doubts, makes them more manageable and easier to deal with.
WEBSITE: A Journal On Doubt, by Bennett Wade Kilpela http://www.msu.edu/user/kilpela/doubtpref.htm
A Journal On Doubt, by Bennett Wade Kilpela leaves me profoundly ambivalent. While his openness allows us a sometimes touchingly intimate look into his personal demons as he struggles to make sense of his deep-seated doubt in conservative, evangelical Christianity, the longwindedness of his manifesto and the almost neurotic way in which he swings and leaps from one somewhat shallow conclusion to another left me wishing for less length and more depth. This work could definitely use a good editor who's willing to cut chapters and pages of repetitive entries, distilling and highlighting some of the truly moving moments of self-discovery within the text.
If you're looking for first-person narratives by people leaving Christian fundamentalism behind, there are much more well-written stories out there. (One that comes to mind is http://www.theheretic.com, which unfortunately is no longer online.) What drew me to Kilpela's story, however (and what kept me reading) was that he and I share a common background and a common struggle, although we've dealt with it in different ways.
Both Kilpela and I were raised in the ultra-conservative, pietist sect called the Apostolic Lutheran Church of America, and both of us left it for greener pastures shortly after confirmation. Both of us have struggled with extreme cases of doubt in the childhood version of the faith, trying to reconcile it with what we perceive as its deficiencies, brought to light by the modern worldview. While this seems very typical in the stories I've read online of people who've left fundamentalism, I think that it reveals a great strength and a great weakness in fundamentalism in general --it is able to inspire deep feelings of loyalty and commitment, but also creates a great sense of cognitive dissonance when confronted with compelling contradictory truths from the outside world.
What makes Kilpela's story unique is his unwillingness to ever make a complete break with the basic fundamentalist propositions he was raised with. While I actually self-identified as an atheist for awhile before having the existential spiritual experience that reconnected me with the Christian faith in a liberal-leaning, post-modern way, Kilpela hangs on by the edge of his fingernails, though despair, depression, divorce, bankruptcy, and more. While he doubts aplenty, Kilpela never repudiates --he's too afraid of hell-fire to do so. Thus his eventual transformation is lesser than it might have been had he actually hit rock bottom in terms of the inadequacy of his prior formulation of Christianity.
The bottom line of Kilpela's story is this: before his period of doubt he demanded nothing less than a religious formulation that was totally unassailable by any logical argument. Now he's willing to accept that no position is air-tight, and calls a truce with ambiguity by making a "bet" on what "makes sense" to him. This "modified Pascal's wager," while not eliminating Kilpela's doubts, makes them more manageable and easier to deal with.
WEBSITE: A Journal On Doubt, by Bennett Wade Kilpela http://www.msu.edu/user/kilpela/doubtpref.htm
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Labels:
apologetics,
christianity,
evangelical,
fundamentalist,
laestadianism,
personal stories,
testimony
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