Clean Your Room!

            Philosophers get their bread and butter in large part by wondering and thinking and sounding smart about epistemology (how we know). Anthropologists join philosophers in wondering about the basics and the nature of humanity. They have written large, difficult to read texts making the non-studied individual feel inadequate. That is how they make a living.

            Emma Donoghue touches upon both of these issues as well as others in her novel, Room. In this work a mother and son are held in captivity for the first five years of the boy’s life (the mother had been there longer). While in captivity the mother has to make decisions about how to teach and raise her son. She teaches him to read, mathematics, how to think, as well as other things. The ordinary day is like a school day, giving structure and purpose to things. They even have a television to watch. Yet unlike Plato’s allegory of the cave, the glimmer of things on the television are not real but are portrayed as imaginary. The shadows remain shadows. What is real is the room and everything in it. What is real is only the universe that the young boy knows. Through the book we follow the boy trying to make sense of a larger world in comparison to the one room world that he had known for so long.

            Just so it can be said, I think Room is a very well written, well-put together book. The story is told from Jack’s (the 5 year old) point of view, his grammar reflecting his understanding of what is real and what is imaginary. 95% of the time Donoghue pulls off this feat, but every once in a while Jack thinks something that does not follow the usual thinking patterns of a five-year-old, even one as different as Jack. That aside, it is a very good work, a very good novel that offers a number of different questions without offering any answers. This is a sign of a good work.

            How many of us feel as if we have been living in a Room but have not realized it until we “escape.” Consider this specifically from the religious point of view. So much of religious education is teaching a grammar that reflects a belief. In Room Jack’s grammar reflects his world-view and to a degree his standards of faith. Following the leading of Bushnell and more currently Macintyre, Lindbeck, and Hauwerwas (among many, many others) there is a strong school of thought that suggests that in religious education we need to help children (and adults) learn and develop a grammar of faith that is reflective of the community. It is one thing to say “Christ is Lord,” but that speech-act carries a deep sense of meaning that further shapes how one speaks. We learn how to speak of God, Christ, and our faith. We claim that our faith tradition offers a salvation from and liberation in life, but are we simply putting ourselves into a room and shutting the door? Jack’s mom worked hard to make the nightmare of the Room a place of safety and security for her son. Do we not do the same with religion?

            Let this sit for a moment and then consider: are we being honest with ourselves? Should we be? There is a safety and security that comes with the grammar of faith that we embrace, and that can be a good thing. People’s lives are saved through the safety of faith. Yet are we free? Is there a world out there that is calling us to take a chance, to engage at “face-value” and what would that be?

            On the one hand, there is the danger that we can create our own Room of reality that will isolate us for others. We can create a grammar and narrative that will only see things in one way and will not offer a place for engagement. The one-way epistemology was the practice of a mother and son held captive. The only way to survive was to shape reality into something that held some sense of goodness, but to control that understanding without any outside input.

            On the other hand, we can have a grammar that shapes who we are, but leaves the doors and windows open to engage with the world. We can have a narrative of what it means to be human and at the same time let that narrative be shaped by experiences with the outside world. This is a much more open understanding of how to be a community.

            Obviously there are many religious communities that fit the former and many that fit the later. I believe that we need to engage the world, that we need to be in a constant flux of back and forth, but with an understanding that there is a reality from which we speak. We have a Room we can return to, we can invite other to, and from where we find our sense of identity. That Room can be a nightmare or it can be a salvation.