The Enchantments Of Miss Myra

And: A Five-Star Review In The Daily Telegraph! Raves In WORLD & Word On Fire!

Look at that. LOOK AT IT! That was my lunch yesterday at Miss Myra’s, an Alabama barbecue dive where my friend Ed took me for some real Southern food. Pork ribs, beef brisket, cornbread, and a double helping of turnip greens. Son! If I had been hit in the parking lot after lunch and died, I would have gone out happy.

If you’re an old-school Southerner, you know exactly how joyful this makes me. It is possible to get barbecue in Hungary — not real Southern style, but close enough — but there are no messes of greens anywhere near the Danube, nor a morsel of cornbread. But they have it in Alabama, and fed me, body and soul.

In fact, the context of the meal was almost as filling as the food. Miss Myra’s is a small joint run by Buckwheat, Myra Grissom Harper’s son in law. Buck told me that Miss Myra is still with us at 88, lives down the street, and tends flowers in her garden. Here is Miss Myra from a photo on the wall of her place:

And here is me with Buckwheat:

He was terrific — full of enthusiasm and pride for his restaurant. As well he should be! You can’t fake authenticity like this. I mean, look:

Notice the placard apotheosizing Bear Bryant, Nick Saban, America and Alabama. And this is an Only In The South scene: Jesus and barbecued pork:

The menu hanging over the window to the kitchen:

This is a short video someone did of their visit to Miss Myra’s. Buck was married to Rennae, Miss Myra’s daughter, until she died a few years ago from cancer. He told me about Miss Myra’s dear departed husband (must have been her second, from the way he was talking). The man, Karl, was a veteran of the US Army who, along with eight of his fellow soldiers, had been accidentally doused with chemicals in the war, by his own side. Six of the eight died shortly after. Karl survived, but was badly wounded, including losing his eyesight. “He could take his eyeballs you and hold ‘em in his hand,” Buck said, matter of factly.

Buck went on and on about Karl. He revered the man, and talked about how the man did things like rebuilt the engine of his pick-up truck, unloaded a backhoe from a trailer. “The foreman told us not to let that blind man drive equipment off the trailer again,” said Buck. “It wuddunt that they didn’t think he could do it. The foreman said it was because everybody else on the crew would stop working to watch the blind man drive heavy equipment.”

Buck sent me this YouTube video showing Karl turning wood on a lathe, though blind:

“We don’t feel sorry for ourselves around here,” said Buck. “We don’t complain. You ought not complain, just keep going. I fell out right over there one day and died of a heart attack” — he pointed to one corner of the restaurant — “but I made it. No complaints.”

Buck’s wife Rennae died of cancer a few years back, but there he is, every day, lithe and funny, selling barbecue, seemingly grateful for all life has given him. I could have hung out with him all day. As we left, I went back towards the kitchen to thank the cooks for making an expatriated Southern boy so happy. I said to the stout older black woman behind the counter, “As much as I loved the meat, the greens were my favorite. I live in Europe, and you can’t get greens over there like we have here.”

Her eyebrows raised, as if to say, Are you serious? No mustards, no turnips, no collars?

“That’s right, no greens,” I said.

“Ain’t that somethin’!” she remarked. “Well, you come back and see us next time.”

I will, mam, I will. This barbecue and greens and banana pudding joint is enchanted!

Ed and me

Last night, Warren Farha and his colleague Nathan rolled up to Ed’s place in a small town near Birmingham, in their van full of pre-ordered copies of Living In Wonder for me to autograph. We’ve sold almost 900 copies through Eighth Day! When I finish my newsletters today (I’m going to do a second one), I have to get started with the Sharpie on this pile:

Woke up this morning to some great reviews. Here’s Tim Stanley with a five-stars-out-of-five review in the Daily Telegraph. Excerpts:

“Lean, and lean hard, into beauty... a portal through which enchantment passes to us.” Stop seeing it as “admirable or decorative”, but admire it and study it. Read books. Attend the opera. This all might sound obvious, but in a world built around distraction, and sedated with instant gratification, one has to become by doing – just as the Orthodox starve and pray themselves into a state of enlightenment. It is the choice between being “lonely tourists flitting around... madly trying to stay one step ahead of boredom” versus joining a “flock of pilgrims on a journey of ultimate meaning”.

Other critics have noted that Dreher has an uncanny ability to articulate how religious conservatives feel, even to pre-empt it. Previous books gave us the Crunchy Cons (2006), whose eponymous conservatives want to turn the clock back; The Benedict Option (2017), which meant opting out of liberal culture; and Live Not By Lies (2020), which drew a line between “Marxist” and “woke”.

I can attest, spending much time among devout Christians, that Dreher has done it again, capturing our present mood: we’re trapped between wanting to throw ourselves into movement politics to defeat The Beast, or looking inwards in the hopes of becoming the change one wants to see in the world. Many of us are asking whether the best service we could do to Christianity is simply to become better Christians.

The author writes with wisdom and honesty, referring often to his painful divorce, and the enthusiasm for everything of an American abroad: imagine if Daisy Miller spent a summer in Dante’s Hell. He is not only influential on the Right – I’m sure Mrs Badenoch and Mr Jenrick will read this book – but one of the finest writers of our times. Living in Wonder might just be his richest and most stimulating work yet.

Wow, Tim! I’m humbled, friend. That’s just incredible. And look what kind things Francis Beckwith had to say in the influential Christian magazine World. Excerpts:

This tale begins with the rise of late medieval nominalism and the work of 14th-century Franciscan friar William of Occam (from which we get Occam’s Razor). Nominalism is the view that abstract ideas—like human nature, numbers, goodness, and beauty—do not really exist, but are merely names or labels that we construct from our experience. In classical Christian theology, however, these abstract ideas eternally exist in the mind of God. The inevitable effect of nominalism on people’s view of the world is to separate God from His creation. In such a framework, writes Dreher, it becomes easier for us not to “see” God working in the material world through events, sacred objects, the beauty of nature, liturgy, etc.

Over the subsequent centuries this way of thinking became so dominant that we moderns, whether we are religious believers or not, wind up over-­exercising the part of our mind that is analytic, litigious, and quantitative. We come to think that our longing for the proper solace for our restless hearts—eternal communion with God—can only be secured by either our reason alone or our subjective feelings untethered from the real world. Both of these options often lead to deep disappointment since we are neither mere reasoning machines nor mere feeling machines, but rational animals, emotional beings with intellects made to love Him who has made us in His image.

In terms of practical guidance, Dreher’s book take a two-part approach. He introduces the reader to a variety of fascinating—and sometimes disturbing—real-life stories about extraordinary events that reveal we live in an enchanted cosmos. He then explains the differing ways Christians can use spiritual practices and disciplines to draw closer to God, all the while exercising the aspect of their minds that has atrophied under the totalizing influence of secularism.

The first approach dominates the book’s first six chapters. Dreher has researched this idea of enchantment and interviewed a variety of ordinary people, religious figures, and respected scholars. In these often gripping accounts, the reader encounters tales of exorcism, dabbling in the occult, the growing interest in extraterrestrial intelligences, and the emerging use of psychedelics.

We learn three things from these stories. First, secularism cannot fully suppress our natural inclination for the transcendent. Second, if traditional Christian faith is not a live cultural option, people will try to satiate their longing for mystery by gravitating to attractive, though spiritually dangerous, substitutes. And third, these tales possess an authenticity that stubbornly resists the secular account of reality. Most importantly, however, some of these stories end in deliverance and true conversion to Christ.

More:

Some evangelicals will feel uneasy about a few of Dreher’s devotional suggestions (e.g., the use of icons), but others will find practices that they can appropriate without compromising their theological convictions. In fact, a few evangelical leaders have done just that. The works of Biola philosopher J.P. Moreland (Finding Quiet and Kingdom Triangle) and the late USC philosopher Dallas Willard (The Spirit of the Disciplines) come to mind.

Readers may be put off by what they perceive as Dreher’s subtle pro-Orthodox, anti-Western bias that makes it seem as if Orthodoxy has all the answers and that it lost nothing of theological or cultural importance after its break with the West in the 11th century. But Dreher goes out of his way to positively and respectfully cite and engage Western Christians—both Protestant and Catholic—from which he has gleaned important insights.

Thank you, Frank! You really get the book. I wasn’t trying to be pro-Orthodox per se, though I certainly believe that the spirituality of the Christian East can help re-invigorate Western Christianity. For me, a living, saving relationship with Jesus Christ is the goal. Last night I ate dinner with a Southern Baptist friend with whom I’m going to Mount Athos later this year. If he should become Orthodox as a result of the trip, great. But I don’t really care. What I care about is that he and I both move closer to theosis — deep unity with Christ — as the result of this pilgrimage.

Lindsey Schlegel, writing for Catholic Bishop Robert Barron’s Word On Fire ministry website, also really gets what I’m after in the book. Excerpt from her wonderful review:

How we get back to seeing and living in wonder, however, is something Dreher believes is a much narrower path. The book’s title, to my mind, doesn’t betray the necessary emphasis he puts on prayer, sacrifice, and works. This is what I find most compelling about Dreher’s argument: He doesn’t stop with radically shifting one’s mindset and taking on whatever form of spirituality a reader feels called to. 

It cannot be said often enough: mystical experience alone cannot suffice. This is the error that many charismatic Christians make: they take experience as authoritative. But mystical experience can only be interpreted within a doctrinal frame based on Scripture and authoritative church teaching.

He emphasizes age-old religious traditions (to a certain degree, Catholic, but more emphatically, Orthodox, his own professed creed) grounded in the reality of humans having bodies, minds, and souls, all of which need to be active. “A Christianity that places mystery, wonder, and awe in the center of its worship and spiritual disciplines is a Christianity that can endure what is to come,” he writes. 

He not only recommends prayer, but insists upon acknowledging the connection of our minds and bodies, whether in a breathing pattern or the act of bowing. If these things seem small or insignificant, consider that in Dreher’s model—which is not really his model at all, but the model of the Church Fathers—they are but one element of a program that integrates and engages the whole person. 

That’s the line in the review that I loved most of all: “…which is not really his model at all, but the model of the Church Fathers”. If I have been faithful to the Fathers, then I have achieved what I set out to do. I don’t offer anything new, just something very, very old, made accessible to modern people.

I give thanks to God for having given me the opportunity to write this book, for the men and women who told me their stories for it, for a great publisher (Zondervan) an editor (Paul Pastor), and … well, gratitude for all the things! Now I’ve got to get out a newsy newsletter for subscribers — y’all don’t demand it, but I demand it of myself — then get to work signing 900 books. That’s a First World Problem, for sure!

If you haven’t pre-ordered Living In Wonder yet, go here to the Zondervan site, where there are links to a number of online retailers. UK readers should go here, to the Hodder Faith site, where they can find links to online retailers there.

If the reviews excerpted above make you curious, here’s a Soundcloud link to the audio of Chapter 9, the chapter about miracles:

And here’s a link to the Substack piece (ungated for all) where I posted all of Chapter One earlier this week. This link to a PDF version of that chapter might work too.

Hope to see at least some of you tonight at Samford for Paul Kingsnorth’s big talk! I’ll be interviewing him onstage. Tickets are still available.

This one is going out to the entire Dreher list, but for you who subscribe, thank you so much for your support. Because this entry is ungated, feel free to forward it to anybody who might like to read it.