A Review of Lenny Duncan's United States of Grace

 

In his memoir, United States of Grace, Lenny Duncan writes in one chapter about hitchhiking as the last American adventure. This hitchhiking is described in romantic detail but the American adventure he is devouring is more wide-ranging than hitchhiking. He embraces an American love story that threads the events in his life together, and connects with others as well who believe in hope and a promise that fuels our country's aspirations.

His life circumstances and mine are completely different, but I do hear the same siren voices as Lenny Duncan's calling me. He echoes and uses those voices to reveal the overwhelming love packed into this memoir. The holiness of Whitman's and Kerouac's words echo and spill out through this narrative, combined with the ecstatic jubilation conjured up by Allen Ginsburg and Grateful Dead music. 

Duncan's first book, Dear Church, reads like a letter from Paul to the church. There is both a love for the church together with a concern our aspirations should be higher as to what can be achieved. His story in United States of Grace addresses a larger audience; namely all the people of the United States who have shown grace and love when faced with intolerance and evil. He challenges his readers to do no less. In his words he inspires us to become, even briefly, the chaplains to the revolution. 

Envisioning the future of the church is inevitably hard. Coming out of a quarantine, like we are at this book's publication, complicates the writing about any future visions we may have. United States of Grace centers the work in front of the church in living into the future of engaging with neighbors, and on our widest sense of what neighbors are. He challenges us to be more and rise above our own navel-gazing.  

And, to this centering call, a voice within says "yes I said yes I will Yes".