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dolphi
, August 02, 2007
THE SCENT OF GOD - A TALE OF BERYL'S ORDEALS WITH HER TRUTH
Beryl Singleton Bissel's book "The Scent of God: a Memoir" is the story of a cloistered nun, a wife, a widow, a single mom, a divorcee and a happily married woman. The lyrical prose and the simple and the easy flowing style of the book effectively disguises the enormous amount of time, the effort and the emotional energy involved in the making of this memoir. Beryl was distressed and thus spurred to write the memoir on overhearing her school-going son's seething remark to a friend that, as an offspring of an ex-priest and an ex-nun, his life was going to be doomed. In order to tell in all sincerity the inevitable sequence of events that determined the course of her life, she took a class in memoir writing. According to Beryl she spent ten years learning how to write and another ten years writing the book, all the while honing her skills as a feature writer and a newspaper columnist. Once the first draft of the memoir was ready and submitted to the agent, it was immediately evident to the agent and the publisher that Beryl had a unique story of great human interest to tell. From that point on it was an endless job of editing and re-editing the draft, constantly pushed, perhaps a little vicariously, by her agent and publisher to bring out the whole story in all its intimate details. Finally, after eight thoroughly revised drafts, and when Beryl was 66 years old, the book was published by a well-known literary publisher, Counterpoint NY. The entire exercise proves Beryl's grit, single-minded dedication and a stubbornness of purpose, which has also been her characteristic throughout her life. It is no wonder that, after such a painstaking refinement of her work, the Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as the "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors."
Beryl's conscientiousness in telling the whole truth is reflected in the fact that she revisited the old places several times, interviewed the living people involved, and took every care not to fall into a memoir writer's usual trap of unintentionally fictionalizing the events recalled from memory. She mentions that telling the story 30 years later, incorporating all the development of mind and heart that has taken place during those 30 years, will be the very thing that "creates" the memoir-- the fuller story. In respect of its candor, cadence and penetrating self-analysis Beryl's memoir is comparable with none other than "My Experiments with Truth", an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi.
Beryl's memoir has the quality of a thorough brief, unsparing in the minutest of details having any bearing on the overall case. The author's powerful video-graphic memory dating back to her earliest childhood aids her in telling her story with unfaltering credibility and realism. Yet the tone is very personal and confessional, confiding the heart's utmost confidences to a trusted friend and a patient and understanding listener in order to purge the heart of whatever residual feelings of guilt or regret.
Contrary to the expectations of this work to be a theological or philosophical treatise, it actually reads like a passionate romantic novel. It is the story of star-struck love which happens accidentally like a lightening strike between two Godly persons separated by a generational gap and both committed to the holy vows of lifelong celibacy. The element of forbidden love makes it loaded with scandalous material of gossipy value with the likelihood of inviting societal recriminations and stigma.
The tumultuous love affair continues, albeit discreetly, amidst picturesque landscapes and adventurous driveways of Puerto Rico and Italy. It gushes forth like a barrage burst with a curious mix of abstinence and abandon, intensity and inexperience. It is a profound discovery of wild ecstasies of physical intimacy between two loving persons.
The characteristic dignity and an immaculate sense of form that is resplendent in this love affair, although besotted with human vulnerability and tragic flaws from the very beginning, makes it the most fascinating and lovable. There is desperation to give it matrimonial sanctity in spite of great uncertainties in obtaining proper dispensation from conflicting sacramental vows, a creeping cancerous ailment and penurious circumstances with no means in sight to support the aspirations of a stable and secure family.
Finally, the God who reveals Himself to Beryl at her darkest hour is a boisterous ?laughing God' - a past-master in pulling a series of synchronistic strings in extricating the enmeshed lives of His guileless faithful. And, one of his laughing minions is the good Bishop Ahr of Trent, who was once a spiritual director of Beryl, a privy to her confidences and who stood by her through most of her travails.
The death-defying love eventually does find its blessed consummation in matrimony, overcoming all obstacles in its path. For the two, who once dedicated their entire lives to serve God, it is another kind of transcendental experience filled with joys and sorrows, and pleasures and pains; the struggles, the frustrations and the triumphs of partaking in the divine miracle of bringing fresh and new life into this world.
Towards the end, the tone of the memoir becomes increasingly pensive and sad as it details the grim visitation of masked death into the unsuspectingly playful parlor of intimately interwoven life.
In spite of the hurts and misunderstandings endured in life the author remains placidly unembittered.
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