With New Eyes
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REVIEW BY SHARON HARPER
How exposed would you feel if thousands of strangers knew your personal struggles and observations of family, friends, and faith? Margaret Becker, a tad apprehensive, is about to find out with the summer release of her debut literary effort, With New Eyes. Although most associate this award-winning singer/songwriter with passionate pop, rock, and R&B influenced tunes, the verbose New Yorker-turned-Nashvillian has more to say than what can be confined within three minutes of verse. In the book's 23 essays, she personalizes 16 years of life experiences. Themes are woven into this quilt of memories as if each piece came from the same loom but in different color schemes: growth in "God's greenhouse," struggle, pain, sacrifice, poverty, family, aging, friendship, marriage, loss, reconciliation, race relations, community, faith, missions, heaven, and more. Encouraging and challenging, they are lessons on choices and on seeing God "with new eyes" in the midst of it all. The depth of emotion that saturates these essays will surely touch receptive readers, but could she have been a little less . . . ahem, revealing?
The author communicates this variety about the interplay between life's struggles and faith in vivid sentences, punching points home with what she calls "kick in the gut" content. That's how these essays, all journal entries originally, were chosen for inclusion: Africa, Ireland, work as a bill collector, a life-changing chat with a college professor, a hospital room, an unfurnished apartment bereft of possessions but full of love, a beach-side walk with a divorced friend, a conversation on the art of throwing stones . . . "Somewhere it's gotta kick you a little," Becker says of this kaleidoscope, "and make you think of something you haven't thought of in a while, or make you think of something in a different light. I tried to include those distinct pieces that would show the sort of ragged beauty in the mundane, the beauty in the tragic. And that beauty to me is the embodiment of faith in operation in our lives." If there is a mentor to be emulated, a writer who rocks Becker's literary world, it is Frederick Buechner. A collection of his writing in daily meditation format, Listening to Your Life, is a resource she reviews constantly. "In my lofty ideals, if I could be a junior, junior, junior Buechner, I'd be very happy . . . if I could mimic that -- not him, but what he leaves the reader with -- then I'd feel I had a good shot at making a story or moment come to life for someone else." Although not a companion piece to her book, Becker's tenth album, Falling Forward, incorporates some of the essays in song format. "Irish Sea" shares the same heavenly experience as the same-named essay, and the project's first release, "Clay and Water" relates to several. The singer will do a book tour in conjunction with her album tour. Both creative expressions refrain from spoon-feeding believers. The writer assumes you already know God, and the four spiritual laws, or you don't, and are listening because nothing else has had any effect. With New Eyes gives us a new vision of God in the every day, but also of Margaret Becker. You won't find her striking face on the book cover. The singer specifically asked that promotion not be "star-driven." She wants it to stand on its own merit, and if she can find the courage -- and time -- more eye-opening titles are sure to follow. v Sharon Harper is on a mission tour in Central Europe.
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"Honestly, if I didn't feel compelled to do what I do, I wouldn't do it on any level, singing or otherwise. I'm really very private," Becker assures us. "A couple of years ago when I was taking stock of my life, when I wrote 'Waves,' (the introductory essay), I felt that I could be a conduit in a very long chain of events and spiritual interaction to actually help somebody. It was almost like a spiritual challenge, 'Do you want to protect yourself? I'll allow that. Or would you like to step out and kind of live on the edge a little?' Although my natural inclination is to be self-protective, I felt that in the wild life I'm trying to live under the umbrella of Christ, I would probably write something like this."