I have been making my way through J.D. Vance’s recent best-seller, Hillbilly Elegy. It is a fascinating read and quite informative. He reflects on his own growing up in Kentucky and, then, significant childhood experience of life in Middletown, OH. His story is interesting because he probably will always be a hillbilly, but has in most ways escaped the trap of the shortcomings of that way of life. His is now a rich resident of Silicon Valley, which has almost nothing in common with his boyhood home in Kentucky. The thing that intrigues me is what this teaches about spirituality, a theme overtly missing in the elegy.
The first issue is with the word, elegy. If I ask students in my classes what the word meant, I am convinced 90% of them would not know. And if they ran into the word, I am sure 89% of them would never look it up and continue to read without having an idea what it meant. Of course, this blows my mind that the title of the book would have a word they don’t know. I know the word means a poem or reflection on something or someone who is sad. It is often confused with the word, eulogy, which typically are the words used in praise of someone at a funeral.
The meaning of elegy for Vance comes in his subtitle for the book: “A Memoir for a Family and Culture in Crisis.” Vance’s book is compelling because it is his own story. At the same time, however, it is the story of countless people across that region in the US called Appalachia. It is misleading to think only of Kentucky and, maybe, parts of West Virginia and Tennessee as Appalachian. Vance spent most of his childhood in southern Ohio in Middletown and in some ways the whole of southern Ohio is Appalachia.
The same is true for my home state of Indiana. In so many Hoosier towns where there were automobile factories, tire factories, etc., a significant number of employees were transplants from Kentucky and Tennessee. I easily recall how many conversations with friends were about “going home” for the holidays, for funerals, etc. Many of them had lived in the state longer than I had, but it was not “home.” And so, it is that I am reading Vance’s book as a window on my past.
We get a feel for the concerns of Vance when we read a sentence like this one: “From low social mobility to poverty to divorce and drug addiction, my home is a hub of misery.” (8) It is this “hub of misery” that caused Vance to use the word, elegy. That is what the elegy is all about. And this is the clue to me that it is also about spirituality. Spirituality deals with misery. Often it is misery that brings spirituality into play. Let’s explore that a bit more.
In the case of the hillbilly, poverty and misery are twins. And more importantly, neither one of them is a choice. Poverty becomes a kind of inheritance. If you are born in many of those zip codes, poverty becomes a fate, not choice. Parents inherit this malady from their parents and grandparents. It is not that folks like this and want it as their condition. It is more like fate; they did not choose it, but can’t get away from it. Vance puts it this way: “To these folks, poverty is the family tradition…” (6)
Spirituality, on the other hand, usually suggests a kind of poverty. It may come with some different description. My own Quaker spirituality talks about simplicity. Probably that fits more of us in this age. We are not going to be economically poor, if we can help it. But we can learn to become “poor in spirit,” as Jesus puts it in the Sermon on the Mount. And we can live a simple life. This is something that makes sense to me and I try to do it. I know it is relative to the range of possibilities. Simplicity to an American like me is outlandish luxury to many others around the world. But relative to others in my culture, I don’t have that much. I know I have way more than enough.
Earlier in this piece I mentioned misery. To be stuck in poverty is to be vulnerable to misery---to be a sitting duck for a miserable life. To choose poverty or simplicity is to avoid misery and, indeed, to celebrate a kind of freedom. We have a freedom from attachment to material goods, to status, etc. For the hillbilly, poverty can be a trap---annulling any hope of freedom. For the spiritual person, poverty (simplicity) can be the door out of the trap---the bondage of things and maybe relationships.
I appreciate at a number of levels what Vance has done. I know he has spawned a whole spate of responses and the discussion will go on. Right now, however, I am more interested in what the book causes me to think. I cannot read something like this and not compare it to my own experience. It asks me to think about how I understand myself, my world and how I live out that perspective. I know there is a fatedness in the lives of everyone. I prefer to call that destiny.
Destiny makes room for some choice. I am grateful for this. If I can make good choices, I can affect, sometimes in radical ways, my destiny. To choose God and choose the spiritual way affords as much freedom as I could expect. That is why I choose to be a friend of God.
The first issue is with the word, elegy. If I ask students in my classes what the word meant, I am convinced 90% of them would not know. And if they ran into the word, I am sure 89% of them would never look it up and continue to read without having an idea what it meant. Of course, this blows my mind that the title of the book would have a word they don’t know. I know the word means a poem or reflection on something or someone who is sad. It is often confused with the word, eulogy, which typically are the words used in praise of someone at a funeral.
The meaning of elegy for Vance comes in his subtitle for the book: “A Memoir for a Family and Culture in Crisis.” Vance’s book is compelling because it is his own story. At the same time, however, it is the story of countless people across that region in the US called Appalachia. It is misleading to think only of Kentucky and, maybe, parts of West Virginia and Tennessee as Appalachian. Vance spent most of his childhood in southern Ohio in Middletown and in some ways the whole of southern Ohio is Appalachia.
The same is true for my home state of Indiana. In so many Hoosier towns where there were automobile factories, tire factories, etc., a significant number of employees were transplants from Kentucky and Tennessee. I easily recall how many conversations with friends were about “going home” for the holidays, for funerals, etc. Many of them had lived in the state longer than I had, but it was not “home.” And so, it is that I am reading Vance’s book as a window on my past.
We get a feel for the concerns of Vance when we read a sentence like this one: “From low social mobility to poverty to divorce and drug addiction, my home is a hub of misery.” (8) It is this “hub of misery” that caused Vance to use the word, elegy. That is what the elegy is all about. And this is the clue to me that it is also about spirituality. Spirituality deals with misery. Often it is misery that brings spirituality into play. Let’s explore that a bit more.
In the case of the hillbilly, poverty and misery are twins. And more importantly, neither one of them is a choice. Poverty becomes a kind of inheritance. If you are born in many of those zip codes, poverty becomes a fate, not choice. Parents inherit this malady from their parents and grandparents. It is not that folks like this and want it as their condition. It is more like fate; they did not choose it, but can’t get away from it. Vance puts it this way: “To these folks, poverty is the family tradition…” (6)
Spirituality, on the other hand, usually suggests a kind of poverty. It may come with some different description. My own Quaker spirituality talks about simplicity. Probably that fits more of us in this age. We are not going to be economically poor, if we can help it. But we can learn to become “poor in spirit,” as Jesus puts it in the Sermon on the Mount. And we can live a simple life. This is something that makes sense to me and I try to do it. I know it is relative to the range of possibilities. Simplicity to an American like me is outlandish luxury to many others around the world. But relative to others in my culture, I don’t have that much. I know I have way more than enough.
Earlier in this piece I mentioned misery. To be stuck in poverty is to be vulnerable to misery---to be a sitting duck for a miserable life. To choose poverty or simplicity is to avoid misery and, indeed, to celebrate a kind of freedom. We have a freedom from attachment to material goods, to status, etc. For the hillbilly, poverty can be a trap---annulling any hope of freedom. For the spiritual person, poverty (simplicity) can be the door out of the trap---the bondage of things and maybe relationships.
I appreciate at a number of levels what Vance has done. I know he has spawned a whole spate of responses and the discussion will go on. Right now, however, I am more interested in what the book causes me to think. I cannot read something like this and not compare it to my own experience. It asks me to think about how I understand myself, my world and how I live out that perspective. I know there is a fatedness in the lives of everyone. I prefer to call that destiny.
Destiny makes room for some choice. I am grateful for this. If I can make good choices, I can affect, sometimes in radical ways, my destiny. To choose God and choose the spiritual way affords as much freedom as I could expect. That is why I choose to be a friend of God.
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