Why "Rumbling Toward Heaven' is Now 'Books and Letters'
An Improved Vision for Writing ALONG C. S. Lewis's Beam of Light
In yesterday’s post, I announced that Rumbling Toward Heaven will become Books and Letters in the New Year. In today’s post, I want to explain why I named the publication Rumbling Toward Heaven in the first place, and disclose my reasons for making the change to its name.
Rumbling Toward Heaven represented something very personal for me, so making this change was actually rather difficult. The title of the blog took its name from Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation,” in which a “respectable,” self-righteous, white southern woman named Ruby Turpin is hit in the eye with a thick blue book entitled, Human Development, hurled at her from across a waiting room by an “enlightened,” but grotesque, girl named Mary Grace.
For Ruby Turpin, the savage encounter with the lupine lass turns out to be a violent appointment with the Divine, a catalyst for a spiritual revelation. O’Connor’s protagonist sees herself as “one who had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right,” but soon discovers that singing on key is no requisite to singing in the heavenly choir.
Her vision ultimately unveils a vast swinging bridge that extends upward from the earth through a field of living fire where she witnesses hordes of souls rumbling toward heaven, and realizes all her virtues will have to be burned away. Suddenly, she sees herself as she really is, not a respectable hog rancher, but a “warthog from hell!”
Finally, the mysterious vision reveals her rightful place in the line for heaven is at the end of the procession, behind “whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.”1
Flannery O'Connor, was a novelist and short story writer who looked at the world, namely her Christ-haunted South, through Christological glasses. She saw the natural world as being anagogic to the supernatural, the veil between the two much thinner than anyone possibly realized. Everything that happens here has eternal consequences; thus, each of us live our lives with one foot in this world and another in the next, but most of us are too blind to see our condition and too deaf to hear the truth.
Explaining her vision for writing literature, O’Connor once wrote,
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.2
There are at least three qualities in O’Connor’s writing that have resonated with me over the years.
First, whether she would have ever known the term or used it, she was a Christian humanist. Modern Christian humanists, like Flannery O’Connor—as well as C. S. Lewis, Fyodor Dostoevsky, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Jacque Maritain, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and even Simone Weil—possess a supernatural view of reality that opposes modernism: the fragmented, meaningless, and naturalist view of the world.
Second, because of her worldview, O’Connor’s vision for literature tends to “lean away from typical social patterns, toward mystery and the unexpected.” She called this “Christian Realism,” and her perspective on writing helped me see that being a writer with Christian convictions did not confine me to some hyper-congenial, sanitized, Hallmark-esque prose that appeals to no one. O’Connor showed me that I could tell the truth about the world in way that was interesting and meaningful. I could attempt to enlighten while delighting (or disturbing) my audience as the occasion required.
Third, Flannery O’Connor’s writing style actually works. Her stories still convict me each time I read them again. I can say without an ounce of sensationalism, as a young fundamentalist, reading O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation,” for the first time, it stuck in my soul and wouldn’t let go of me. I returned to that story again and again, and it literally changed my life. Afterwards, the rest of her shocking, grotesque, and violent stories made much more sense to me.
So why the name change?
Simply stated, I want to expand my writing pursuits to include topics for which the current name might be confusing to some. Although my writing will continue to offer the same unique Christian humanist perspective that it alway has, I hope to take a cue from C. S. Lewis, in his memorable essay "Meditation in a Toolshed," where he reminds us there are two ways to view a beam of light: to look at it and to look along it. To look at the beam is to examine it critically; to look along it is to see the world illuminated by it.
I’m endeavoring to do both: examine the structures and beauty of literature, culture, theology, and history, but also invite readers to journey along these beams, discovering new perspectives and profound truths on a greater number of topics. Said another way, I don’t only want to write about Christian Humanism, I want to write about everything that interests me as a Christian humanist.
For those who subscribed to Rumbling Toward Heaven because it appealed to your spiritual interests, there is no reason for concern. I will still write about culture and current events, provide useful tips on writing and teaching, offer thoughtful reflections on great literature, and as much as possible, meaningful insights into human flourishing—all from a perspective shaped by the enduring truths of Scripture and illuminated by the wisdom of the Great Books.
Changing the name to Books and Letters will allow me to cast the net wider than I have in the past. Since ideas shape culture, and books and letters are the tools through which these ideas are forged and preserved, the name is more fitting. Books and letters are indispensable for learning, for dialogue, and for a shared pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness, especially when they are written from the perspective that Christian Humanism has ultimate purchase on all aspects of culture and civilization.
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll reveal what you can expect from Books and Letters in 2025. If you appreciated Rumbling Toward Heaven, I think you’ll be pleased with how things are expected to shape up in the coming year.
Flannery O’Connor, Collected Works, 654.
O'Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (FSG Classics). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.