Franny and Zooey Obsession Part 2: Seeing God in Chicken Soup
Franny and Zooey are the most sophisticated pilgrims I have ever had the chance to stumble upon. And the job of these pilgrims, of all of us, is the journey. The seeking, the wanting, the longing.
But what if what we’re looking for has been here all along? What if the real journey is to discover that the divine is all around us and within us and before us and behind us and never ever apart from us?
Franny and Zooey embark on a journey that leads them to discover that what they’ve been searching and scratching and scrambling toward has been there all along.
Zooey says to Franny,
"If it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're missing out on every single…religious action that's going on around this house. You don't even have sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup--which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse. So just tell me, just tell me, buddy. Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master--some guru, some holy man--to tell you how to say your Jesus Prayer properly, what good would it do you?
How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?"
Zooey’s right. If we can’t hear God in the whisper, how can we hear Him in the storm? If we can’t see God in the minutely beautiful, in the mundane acts of love and life and service and hope, how will we see Him in holy temples and mission trips? How will we ever reach a state of praying without ceasing when we can’t even partake in communion clothed in chicken soup?
We are in such constant need of reminding that every breath is proof that there is magic and every bowl of chicken soup is consecrated.
The job of the pilgrim is the journey to discover the Christ, the wonder, already among us.
Franny and Zooey Obsession Part 1: Fat Lady Love
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ” Matthew 25:40
If you haven’t read Salinger’s Franny and Zooey yet, you must. And I must give you a spoiler alert because I am about to give away the revelation moment of the book—and my life.
Franny and Zooey are two insufferably nuanced yet lovable siblings (Zooey a man’s nickname for Zachary, not the female name like Zooey Deschanel) who are facing the worst kind of disillusionment: spiritual. I say worst because, of course, the spiritual never sticks to its manageable compartment of the “spiritual realm,” but spills over into every cranny of our lives, spoiling the whole barrel.
In sum: both Franny and Zooey, to some extent, are in crisis, looking for something real, something authentic, something that points to love and beauty and wisdom beyond the self-serving strivings of a world obsessed with counterfeit praise and lifeless knowledge.
Which brings us to the Fat Lady.
The Fat Lady is introduced to young Franny and Zooey by their much admired and idolatrized older brother, Seymour. Seymour asks Zooey to shine his shoes before a radio broadcast, which sends sends Zooey into a tirade about how everyone was a moron – the studio audience, the announcer, the sponsors – and he isn’t going to shine his shoes for them especially since they can’t see his shoes anyway. But Seymour tells him to shine his shoes anyway; shine them for the Fat Lady.
Seymour tells the same thing to Franny, only that instead of shining her shoes, she should be funny for the Fat Lady.
Years later, Franny and Zooey are dealing with the same problems: why try when it doesn’t matter? Why take all the effort to “shine your shoes” when the audience is too moronic or not in a position to see them anyway?
Because, Zooey eventually realizes, these morons, these dense audience members, these people surrounding us, annoying us, irritating us, THEY are the Fat Lady.
In fact, "There isn't anyone who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.”
Zooey says to Franny, “Don't you know that? And don't you know--listen to me now--don't you know who the fat lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."
Christ Himself. Is the Fat Lady? Is the annoying coworker whose voice is just an octave too screechy? Is the vicious professor? Is the absent-minded listener who is texting and tweeting and tamping their foot as you pour out your heart? Is the man with the “Why Lie? I need a beer” sign at the street corner? Is whatever brand of personality quirks you are obliged to condescend upon?
Christ Himself is anyone?
It’s not like we haven’t heard it before, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
The Fat Lady just so happens to be God with a non-alienating arbitrary name.
And that, I think, is enough epiphany for one blog post.
T.S. Tuesday: Journey of the Magi Pt. 1
It’s finally happening. I’ve finally branched out from the Four Quartets. Today’s evocative Eliot comes from his poem “The Journey of the Magi.”
I ask your forgiveness in advance because I’m going to mix some Eliot with some Salinger. My brain has been fully marinating in the delightful details and philosophical forays of all that is Franny and Zooey and, despite my efforts at purging, I just can’t seem to let him go. Plus, I think it’s pertinent, at least tangentially.
I’ll start by sharing the first of three stanzas of Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi.”
(This will be a three-part post, FYI. If you’re the type who likes to read ahead, you can view the poem in its entirety here).
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.”
As the title suggests, this poem is about the journey of the Magi, the three wise men, to see the Christ child. Magi sounds far off and mystical. Like there has to be robes and camels and ancient wisdom involved in seeing this newborn Messiah.
But that’s not true.
We are all pilgrims. We all have the makings of a wise man or woman.
As a fellow pilgrim and aspiring wise woman, I’ve been thinking a lot about this journey. And what the final destination will be.
What’s the point? Why put up with the hostile towns and dirty villages? Why be called a fool?
What is it about seeing this Christ child that makes the arduous road worthwhile?
What is it that this SEEING will do?
The answer I have come to currently is the answer given by Zooey, in Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.
Which, ironically doesn’t require a physical journey at all, but a journey of perspective. A paradigm shift.
As Zooey tells his nervous-and-religious-breakdown-ridden sister, Franny, there is something about Jesus, this Messiah that the Magi, sleeping in snatches and traveling across deserts ventured to see, that can’t be found in any one else:
“Jesus knew — knew — that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff.”
“I can't see why anybody — unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim — would even want to say a prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls — but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that — but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God.”
God is in EVERYTHING. Including us.
This is the seeing and seeking that I wish to attain. To see the I AM in me, in my coworkers, in my friends, in my enemies. This is the pilgrimage that enthralls and propels me.