Theo of Golden
When I was about halfway through the book, Theo of Golden, I asked my wife, “Am I Theo?”
She was a bit further along than me at that time and she just gave a bit of a knowing smile and raised her eyebrows.
It has been a while since a novel has entranced me as Theo of Golden has done. I just finished it on Tuesday and I am tempted to pick it back up and re-read it again. The last time I remember a novel affecting me like this one has was the first time I read A Prayer for Owen Meany nearly 30 years ago. My primary reading time is while I’m on the treadmill in the morning (shoutout to ebooks with large print readable while running) and on Tuesday morning, I came to a point where I let out an audible gasp and had to stop running because of what happened. I’m grateful that no one else seemed to notice what I did at that moment. I am not going to share what happened at that moment in the book because that needs to be for the reader to experience.
I was at a point in the book, however, when I finished my run that I knew the book needed to be finished today. So as I ate my lunch, I savored the last 30-40 pages of this book. When I finished, I closed the cover on my iPad and held the device to my chest.
Am I Theo?
Without spoiling the story, the heart of the novel is a mysterious man named Theo (who is very hesitant to reveal much of himself to others, as many enneagram 5s like me are known for) who comes to a town in Georgia and begins bestowing blessings on others through portraits that dot the walls of a local coffee house. A local artist created these portraits of locals who visit the coffee house. Theo purchases the portraits and arranges to meet with each person and shares a blessing of what he sees in the hand-sketched faces.
The “bestowals” are deeply touching and reflect this truth from John O’Donohue in his book To Bless the Space Between Us.
When someone blesses you, the fruits of healing may surprise you and seem to come from afar. In fact, they are your own natural serenity and sureness awakening and arriving around you.1
Each of Theo’s bestowals show the surprise and the distance traveled but reveal an awakening and a true sense of presence as he sits on a simple bench along the Promenade in Golden. Theo seems to intuitively recognize the held-back things in the sketched faces . Again, quoting O’Donohue...
Blessing is the art of harvesting the wisdom of the invisible world. From day to day it offers us new gifts.2
As the story progresses, we see how the blessings are not simply Theo’s only to share but we begin to see the bestowals that others share with him and those they share with others - a bike ride, a series of gifts, a cello recital, trusting others with stories, and sitting around tables sharing meals and community. All bestowals and all blessings.
This book feels like a novelization of the last chapter of To Bless the Space Between Us which is entitled, “To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing.” Towards the end of that concluding chapter, O’Donohue writes:
We have no idea the effect we actually have on one another. This is where blessing can achieve so much. Blessing as powerful and positive intention can transform situations and people. The force of blessing must be even more powerful when we consider how the intention of blessing corresponds with the deepest desire of reality for creativity, healing, and wholesomeness. Blessing has pure agency because it animates on the deepest threshold between being and becoming; it mines the territories of memory to awaken and draw forth possibilities we cannot even begin to imagine!3
Again, Am I Theo?
Now, there’s a lot about Theo that is definitely not me, but this sense of seeing something deeper and a desire to share that with others? Feels a lot like me and what I share here. It is also what I have found myself sharing with people directly more and more over the last few years. I have made cards with my photographs and often create birthday and everyday wishes for people based on those images and what I know is happening in their lives. I call these “visual prayers.” I also, of course, spent a year photographing a bench and continue to be drawn to benches in my photography. I couldn’t help but imagine myself photographing “Theo’s bench” at the Fedder or sharing a blessing as he did with so many in this story.
But about the feather...I photographed this tiny feather about two weeks ago simply because it drew my eye on one of Scout and my morning walks. I didn’t know why then but I see it now in the feather not only on the cover of the book, but the way that the feather in the story represented a blessing given to Theo and one that he shared with another.
I hope to live as Theo shares at one point in the book. When responding to a question about what makes “good art,” he says:
Yes, I have thought about it. In fact, I’ve thought about it a great deal. And I’ve asked others about it. But I don’t know if I have an answer either. Other than this. It might not make a lot of sense, but for anything to be good, truly good, there must be love in it. I’m not even sure I know fully what that means, but the older I get, the more I believe it. There must be love for the gift itself, love for the subject being depicted or the story being told, and love for the audience.
Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or raising a child, if love is not in it — at the very heart of it — it might be skillful, marketable, or popular but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core.4
I may not be Theo, but I see so much of myself in Theo and long for more of him to be lived out in the world - blessing, presence, hope, welcome, and love.
My next post is going be an offer of something drawn from all of this but for now, this is simply a note of gratitude to Allen Levi for introducing me to Theo, Ellen, Asher, Shep, Addie, Simone, Tony, Kenrick, Lamisha, Minette, and so many others on the Promenade of Golden, Georgia.
Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed
PS - Scout and me on a bench! Check the inscription between us too!
O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (p. 200). (Convergent Books). Kindle Edition.
O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (pp. 188-189). (Convergent Books). Kindle Edition.
O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (pp. 218-219). (Convergent Books). Kindle Edition.
Levi, Allen. Theo of Golden: A Novel (p. 128). (Atria). Kindle Edition.
Have read Theoof Golden twice since a dear friend sent me her copy in the spring...second reading was in my own copy!
This is in my TBR stack…I may need move it to the top.