This week marks the release of a new book, a passion project from Square Halo called Tiny Thoughts That I’ve Been Thinking: Selected Writings of Leslie Anne Bustard. In the forward Théa Rosenburg editor writes:
[Leslie Anne Bustard] wrote poems and essays with startling abundance—more of them and more beautiful than seemed reasonable for a woman fighting two kinds of cancer. Though she had published a few pieces before her diagnosis, she spent her last three years publishing consistently in the writing communities that encouraged and supported her work, in addition to editing a book of essays and publishing a collection of her poems. The warmth and welcome of her writing drew others toward her, as though she’d thrown back the curtains in a dim room and readers couldn’t help but turn toward the sunlight.
This is the heart and soul of this book, but also only the beginning of it. Leslie’s collected writing is bound for hearts, not just for the pages they are written in. Her words had the incredible capacity to take on a whole new form of truth in my heart as I read this wonderful collection of essays, poems, and recipes. All the “tiny thoughts”.
Many of Leslie’s writings in this book come from her time in what she called “cancer-land” and despite the barrenness and bleakness one might expect of such a land, she maintained the sight and expression of the “goodness of the Lord in the land of the living”. As I read her writings and of her battle with two kinds of cancer, stage IV melanoma and stage II breast cancer, I couldn’t stop thinking about the land of the living and all the questions I had about it as a Christian. Where is it? Where isn’t it? When is it? My humanity is bound to certain answers. Maybe it’s where things are easy and stress-free. Maybe it’s where money isn’t a concern and where good health is aplenty. Or maybe it’s where one feels accepted, loved, and relevant. Rarely have my answers been good.
This book answers those questions of where and when the land of the living is the way Frederich Buechner does when he says the kingdom of God is “now and then” and “already and not yet”. The Gospel gives us the good news that the kingdom of God has come down to earth, but in the course of our human lives we experience some very bad news that dims this trust of the kingdom’s presence here. We see homelessness, teen depression, forest fires, and cancer diagnoses. Pets go missing, our favorite restaurants close, and our aging bodies ache after tying shoes. What do we make of the “goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” when we experience all these reminders, great and small, of our broken and dying world? What does it look like to live the abundance of the kingdom in a world that is often barren and bleak.
Here is a book written by a saint who daringly did just that. She did it in her poems which saw beauty in faded yellow curtains and in her recipes that were each a little feast, meant to be tasted and shared with others. She did it in her commitment to community and in her blog posts that called a day in “cancer-land” a good day because she noticed the ordinary beauty of a cheesy omelet. Scholars can write all the theologies they want to with some beautiful words and convincing translations, but I think my favorite theology of the goodness of God belongs to Leslie Bustard who summarized it in remembering a good cheesy omelet in the midst of battling two cancers.
So, now I understand what Frederich Buechner meant by saying “now and then” and “already and not yet”. The kingdom of God and the land of the living is right here and it is right now. It has been inaugurated on this side of resurrection, but not yet fully consummated. As Christians we are called to participate in the kingdom come. We participate in it by noticing the grand beauty of a child’s birth or the sun’s setting over the Sierra crest mountains, but also in noticing the smaller beauties of healthy wet dirt or a picnic table. And even then when we feel the especially painful moments of cancer, death, and loneliness, we participate in the kingdom by properly mourning with our brothers and sisters and holding onto the promise of resurrection.
I’m without a doubt convinced of the warmth and love of Leslie Bustard which I have heard and read of now and I attest that the pages of this book are teeming with it. It is a strange thing to feel the warmth of someone and be fully convinced of their love for others without having ever met them. My suspicion is that is what it means to be remembered as one of Christ’s saints.
—blog post by Iman Mozoffarian
