Why this book: I just finished reading The Sparrow for the second time and was inspired (again.)  I wanted to follow up with reading Children of God again, and be inspired again, and that was a good call. 

Summary in 4 sentences: This is the sequel to The Sparrow, in which the sponsors of the first mission to Rakhat believe there is unfinished business on that planet and plan a follow-on mission.  Meanwhile, one of the strong characters on the earlier mission, thought to have been killed on Rakhat, survived, though that is not known by the Jesuits on earth planning the follow-on mission.  In parallel with the preparations on earth, Children of God follows her life and the lives of several of the characters from the Runa and Jana’ata cultures in the aftermath of the departure of the Earth visitors. There is drama on Earth, in the controversy about how the mission would be undertaken and who would go on it, and drama on Rakhat during a great upheaval as the spark of revolution ignited by the earthlings in The Sparrow, becomes something of a conflagration…and then the Jesuits return…..

My impressions: A powerful story and an excellent follow-up to The Sparrow in exploring issues of faith, suffering, and the human condition.  Mary Doria Russell is thoughtful, creative and articulate – and I really like her writing style. I felt that she went deeper psychologically, morally, philosophically in Children of God than in The Sparrow.    

As a novel, Children of God was not as well constructed as The Sparrow – it was a bit harder to follow, there were more characters than I could easily keep track of, especially those natives to Rakhat with strange names.   I would have liked a glossary to help me keep track of the characters, as Hillary Mantel did in Wolf Hall.  Also, though the inhabitants of Rakhat were not human, Russell gave them very human psychological characteristics; apart from some rather trivial physical traits, they seemed all but human in their emotions, reactions, and decisions.  Which of course made it easier for we, her human readers, to relate to.

Those quibbles aside,  I really, really  liked the book.  I had a number of  “wow!” moments as I read conversations between characters arguing between the short vs long view, ends vs means, accepting vs fighting to change reality, whether pain and suffering indeed have meaning and redemptive value.  Russell says in the postscript interview that 80% of the correspondence she’d received preferred Children of God to The Sparrow, whereas she herself preferred The Sparrow. 

The book begins where The Sparrow left off – with Father Emilio Sandoz struggling to deal with his experiences on Rakhat, with the Jesuit leadership, with his own loss of faith.  He does renounce his faith and his priestly vows, and as a layman begins to find joy, love, as a door opens to a life that promises to  redeem him.  Then he is kidnapped, drugged and wakes up part way into an expedition to return to Rakhat.  The Church deemed that his unique skills, language, knowledge of the culture were essential to fulfill the objectives of the second Jesuit mission, and this greater good superseded his personal wishes and happiness.  

Much of the book takes place in the six or so years flying near the speed of light to Rakhat -around 20 years in earth-relative time (the book’s timeline is measured in “earth-relative” years.)  During this transit period, we get to know a team very different from the team in the first expedition.  This second team which included the kidnapped Sandoz, was filled with tension and mistrust,  which included Sandoz extremely angry and resentful at his abduction from a life that promised joy, love, happiness.  The very different individuals in this group eventually learn to accommodate each others and the group eventually evolves into a functioning team, though one very much in contrast to the high-functioning team we saw in The Sparrow. 

Meanwhile we learn that unknown to any on the expedition, Sofia Mendes,  one of the central characters in The Sparrow had survived the massacre that took the lives of most on the initial expedition to  Rakhat.  After that slaughter, she had been nursed back to health and protected by the Runa who she had been trying to protect.  She becomes part of their community and applies her significant skills, insights and leadership to help them survive and resist further persecution by their erstwhile tormentors -the Jana’ata.  Meanwhile,  she bears and raises a child with which she was pregnant when her husband and the others from the first expedition were killed, becomes a foster mother to a Jana’ata child and develops a close relationship with a Jana’ata leader. 

That is the setting.  As in The Sparrow,  Children of God takes the reader back and forth between what is happening on Rakhat, with Sofia Mendes and several of the key characters from both Runa and Jana’ata cultures, and what is happening within the group of Earth people on the space platform, on their way to Rakhat and after they land.  When they finally do reach Rakhat, they are surprised at how much has changed in the nearly 40 earth-relative years since Sandoz had left after the first expedition.  The ideas of freedom and revolution had unleashed a level of violence reminiscent of the French or Russian revolutions.  The former Jana’ata masters are now the hunted and the persecuted.  And eventually Sandoz and his team are supporting a group of Jana’ata that is being pursued by Mendes and her Runa.  

In Children of God, Russel introduces a number of new characters and one old one, who serve as vehicles for her to share perspectives that I found fascinating, among them,  Carlo, Danny Iron Horse, Suukmel, and Isaac. Carlo is the leader of the second expedition, charming, intelligent, practical, but ultimately an unscrupulous opportunist. From Danny Iron Horse we learn how native American culture harmonized with Jesuit culture or didn’t – depending on the objectives and context.  Suukmel is a Jana/ata woman of great wisdom – perhaps Russell’s own muse.  And from Isaac we gain insights into the perspectives of an autistic savant. 

Unlike The Sparrow, Children of God does not end in ambiguity. As the author says, it is a long dark tunnel that ends in the light. There are surprises all the way into the last couple of pages of the book.  The paperback copy I read includes an interview with the author, and she is very forthcoming and direct in her answers to questions about meaning, intent, and sources.  

In both books, we are given new perspectives on being human, by how the author portrays these other sentient beings who have different though similar capabilities and qualities.  The moral issues of how different tribes, cultures, races interact are highlighted by the tensions between three different, but similar species – human, Runa, and Jana’ata.  We also see how misunderstandings, and a tendency to make negative judgments with imperfect information can create hate, violence and war.  There is a lot to learn, think about and discuss in this two part series – highly recommended for thoughtful readers.  

Some themes/perspectives that I found interesting in Children of God:

• Smell not sight is the primary sense for natives of  Rakhat.  One gets perhaps a dog’s perspective.
• Physical and aesthetic beauty can be seductive and a source cruelty and ugliness
• We see the dangers of excessive idealism and ambition for good.  We see crimes against humanity committed for “the greater good”.  
• Sex on Rakhat is transactional and focused on procreation or recreation.  Romance is not involved.
• We see the negative health impact of forcing a vegetarian diet on carnivores.
• Interesting to consider what if our meat animals (Cows, pigs, chickens) could think and talk….
• Danny Iron Horse, a native-American leader on the expedition, sheds light on the perspective of someone who has grown up in the Lakota Sioux culture on a reservation with both native-American and European ancestry in his blood.
• How drugs can control psychological pain, but don’t permit true healing. and growth.  Being willing to go through, deal with, and address psychological pain is necessary for Post Traumatic Growth. 
• How the imperatives of time and necessity can allow a functioning team to evolve out of a group of antagonistic individuals. 
• Even the evil characters in this book have redeeming qualities.  Russell gets into the heads of those we are tempted to hate, and provides perspective. “Don’t be too quick to judge!” she says in her interview, as one of her messages.
• How hate and the desire for revenge can infect whole communities and incite them to feel justified in committing atrocities.  Good people infected by a drive for revenge for wrongs done them.  Humans: Sandoz and Sofia Mendes. Jana’ata: Supaari and Hlavin Kthiri. 
• The perspective and wisdom of those with autism. In the second half of the book, one of the key characters is “on the spectrum”,  a-social, but wise and talented in unique ways. 
• A new vision of God emerges in the end out of a unification of music with DNA.

Below are some of the many passages I highlighted because I found them interesting, insightful, or inspirational: 

Candotti:  “All spiritual enlightenment begins with a neatly made bed.”p59 (Did Bill McRaven read this book?)

Sandoz  “The redemptive power of suffering, in my experience at least, is vastly over-rated.”  P60

Sandoz. “Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I’m capable of.  Everything else takes energy or money.” P64

“What if?” was more dangerous than “Why?” p77

Comparison is the source of all significance  81

Never give a woman reasons that can be argued with.  Say no, or prepare for defeat. P87

Danny Iron Horse: “Like Saint Teresa said: If that’s how God treats His friends,  it is no wonder He’s got so few of them.” P111

They (the Runa) accepted Isaac’s solitary silence as they accepted his lack of tail and his hairless body, as they accepted nearly everything in their world: with placid good humor and unruffled calm. P136

Sofia:  “Anne said that wisdom begins when  you discover the difference between ‘That doesn’t make sense’ and ‘I don’t understand’” p143

DW Yarborough: There was no such thing as an ex-Jew or an ex-Catholic or an ex-Marine.  “Now why is that?…  Talk is cheap.  We believe in action. Fight for justice. Feed the hungry.  Take the beach.  We none of us sit around hopin’ for some big damn miracle to fix things….We don’t preach. We listen.”

DW Yarborough: “Maybe God is only the most powerful poetic idea we humans’re capable of thinkin’…On my best days, I believe in Him with all my heart…(and on my worst days) even if it’s only poetry, it’s poetry to live by, Sofia – poetry to die for. Maybe poetry is the only way we can get nearer the truth of God….and when the metaphors fail, we think it’s God who’s failed us!”  p145-46

Sofia: Even the laws of physics resolve to probabilities.  How can I know what to do?

Vince Giuliani: “In the darkness of my soul, I have wondered if God enjoys watching despair, the way voyeurs watch sex.  That would explain a great deal of human history!”

Danny Iron Horse: “Do you believe that the end justifies the means?”Sandoz: “Sometimes. It depends, obviously.  How important is the end? How nasty are the means?”158

Carlo: I always thought it was a tactical mistake for God to love us in the aggregate, when Satan is willing to make a special effort to seduce each of us separately.” P185

Danny Iron Horse: “You know the facts, so decide. Are the Pope and the Father General frauds?  Or do you understand less than you think?” p209

“Have you discovered a preexisting truth? Or have you imposed an arbitrary meaning on whatever it is you’re considering?”p210

(Of Sandoz) After all, he thought, the one thing an agnostic knows for sure is: you never know. p215

There was for Daniel Iron Horse, some hope that he might live long enough to know the answer to a question Giuliani would carry to his grave: What if I am wrong about everything? p216

(Native Americans ) fought to preserve a way of life that valued, above all else, courage, fortitude, generosity and transcendent spiritual vision.  P217

Suukmel:  “Fear corrupts, not power. Powerlessness debases. Power can be used to good effect or ill, but no one is improved by weakness.” P220

Suukmel:  ..Any institution considering itself the guardian of truth will value constancy, for change by definition introduces error…How then does a wise prince introduce change when the generations have enshrined a practice or a prohibition that now harms or cripples?” p221

Suukmel:  Dani, when we change things, we are like the little gods: we act and from each act falls a cascade of consequence – some things expected and desired, some surprising and regrettable. Bt we are not like your God who sees everything!”  p225

Marcus Aurelius: “The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.”p248

Seneca:  “The safest course is to tempt fortune rarely.” P250

Sofia Mendes had, after all, survived a great deal by blocking out emotion – her own and others’.  And love was a debt, best left unincurred. p 257

Ha’anala: “The  God of Israel can’t be seen, but hesees us – when we are ready, when we are not ready,  when we are at our best or at our worst or paying no attention. Nothing can be hidden from such a God.  That’s why people fear Him.”  p259-60

But reality didn have a great deal to recommend it these days and Emilio was quite willing to exchange whatever message was embedded in these new dreams for the artificial tranquility of Quell…. Chemical Zen he thought…  p262

Sean Fein: “All is vanity and chasing after the wind.  The wicked prosper and the righteous get rooted up the hole, and is that all y’learned ina quarter of a century in the Company of Jesus/”  Sandoz:  “Fuck off Sean.” p267

(Amazing stuff on SUFFERING and  God p290 -291)

Candotti:  How long did he protect himself from the fear that God was just  bullshit story, that religion was just a load of crap?…And where the hell was Emilio finding the strength now to hope again that maybe it would all make sense?” p290

Her soul seemed to him like colored glass: translucent but not transparent. p305

Sandoz: “Father Iron Horse, I detect a certain indulgence in wishful thinking.” p313

Sandoz:  “It’s called irony Nico.  Irony  is often saying the opposite of what is meant.  To get the joke, you must be surprised and then amused by the difference between what you believe the person thinks and what he actually says.” p314

Sandoz:  “Religion – the wishful thinking of an ape that talks!  You know what I think:  Random shit happens, and we turn it into stories and call it sacred scripture -” p346

(of Suukmel) Chaos demanded not the death of Virtue in her life, but the birth of Passion. Joy. Creation.  Transformation. p355

Suukmel: “Listen to Isaac’s music again. Remember what you thought when you first heard it. Know that if we are children of one God, we can make ourselves one family in time.”    “And if God is just a song?” Ha’anala asked, alone and frightened.  Suukmel did not answer for a while. Finally she said, “Our task is the same.” p 359

Of Sean Fein: In his own soul, he knew with sudden certainty that it was not rebellion or doubt or even sin that broke God’s heard; it was indifference.  p362

If anything could prove the existence of the soul, he thought, it is the utter emptiness of a corpse.  p 400

Danny Iron Horse: Now finally, he was in a place where note of that made any difference, where he was simply an Earthman. Only here (on Rakhat) had he come to understand that he was not a battleground – to be divided and conquered by his grandparents – but a garden, where each person who’d contributed to his existence longed to see that something of themselves had taken rood and grown.  p 419

Danny Iron Horse:  “I could ask you to trust me, or I could just tell you to do as you’re told.” p420

Rukuei Kthiri: He would tell the foreigner: I have learned that poetry requires a certain emptiness, as the sounding of a bell requires the space within it.p 425

Isaac:  “It’s the DNA for humans and for Jana’ata and Runa. Played together   A lot of it is dissonant.  I remembered the parts that harmonize.” p427

Sandoz: In the absence of certainty, faith is more than mere opinion;  it is hope.  p431

On Sandoz:  He was a linguist after all, and it seemed entirely possible to him that religionand literature and art and music were all merely side effects of a brain structure that comes into the world ready to make language out of a noise, sense out of chaos. Our capacity for imposing meaning, he thought, is programmed to unfold the way a butterfly’s wings unfold when it escapes the chrysalis, ready to fly.  We are biologically driven to create meaning.  And if that’s so, he asked himself, is the miracle diminished?  It was then that he came very close to prayer.  Whateever the truth is, he thought, blessed be the truth.  p431

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