The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner/Alan Sillitoe/144 pp.

This is one of the best collections of short stories, by an artist I'd never heard of, that I have ever read. Sillitoe was born and raised in Nottingham, England, in a working-class family. At the age of 14 he left school and went to work with his father in a local bicycle factory. The stories in this collection mostly deal with families like Sillitoe's - poor factory workers living in cramped, dirty houses where the noise, soot and grime of the nearby factory is a constant part of their lives.
The title story is about a young man (Colin) who robs a bakery and is sent to a borstal, a sort of part youth prison, part reform school. The governor (warden) of the borstal gives him the opportunity to run cross-country meets for the prison track team; Colin is a good runner, and the governor thinks he will help him to win against a posh private school and get the borstal some good publicity. Throughout the race against the private school, Colin is way in the lead, but he stops running shortly before the finish line, intentionally losing the race to show the governor he is in charge of his own life.
"Uncle Ernest" is about a veteran of World War I who has suffered a mental breakdown due to his experiences in the war. There is an almost childlike innocence to him; when he meets two young girls at a diner, obviously poor and hungry, he offers to buy them something to eat. He continues to meet the girls at the diner, and the older of the two begins taking advantage of his innocence, getting him to buy them other things. Unfortunately, Ernest's motives are misunderstood by other patrons of the diner; they (and the police) assume he is a pervert, and warn him away from the girls.
I enjoyed all the stories in this volume, but I think my favorite was "The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller". Frankie is a young man of about twenty, who has the mental capacity of a younger boy; he acts as general (though he prefers to be called sergeant-major) in the neighborhood boys' skirmishes with other groups of boys. World War II is approaching, and Frankie assumes that when the war starts, he'll go to join his father's regiment; obviously, when the war does begin, he is rejected for service and ends up assisting the local civil defense patrols. This story is obviously at least partially autobiographical; Frankie addresses the narrator as "Alan", and Alan is a writer of stories about his old neighborhood. Sillitoe uses the story to reminisce about his own childhood and to express regret over having "moved on" to be a well-known writer who seems to have lost touch with his roots.
Reviewers have compared this book to The Catcher in the Rye, calling Colin a "British Holden Caulfield". It's easily one of the best collections of short stories I've ever read. Unfortunately, this copy of the book will not be going back into the MULSA book sale - it was missing a front cover when I got it, and has lost several pages since then. However, I note from MERLIN that there are several copies in the Libraries' collection: MERLIN

Monk in the Inner City / Mary Lou Kownacki / 176 p.

Let's start with this: Mary Lou Kownacki is NOT your average nun, or at least, not what I, in my apparent small mindedness, envisioned a nun to be like.  In a series of stories, recollections, and simple thoughts arranged in alphabetical groupings, Mary Lou leads the readers on a spiritual journey. Mary Lou is a Benedictine Sister living in Erie, Pennsylvania, attempting to "stretch [her] monk's robe until it embraces the suffering world."  She offers insights to a variety of topics from angels to Thomas Merton to zen wisdom and everything in between.

Reading this was actually a lot more fun than I expected.  Sister Mary Lou is a bit of radical, at least in my mind.  She participates in peace demonstrations and gets thrown in jail.  She advocates for better roles for women in the Catholic Church.  She surprised me at every turn.  Her stories tugged at your heartstrings and made you stop and think.  I felt like she made you stop and reconsider your preconceived notions about monastic life and about religion/Christianity in general.  An enlightening read.

Not Just a One Night Stand: Ministry with the Homeless / John Flowers and Karen Vannoy / 128 p.

In this nonfiction work, the reader is basically presented with a conundrum: what is the best way to conduct a successful ministry with the homeless?  John and Karen take the reader through the transformation of a church as it strives to conduct such a ministry.  The intricacies of such a task are not what those involved first imagined--not as easy as they thought it would be.  The seeming simplicity of offering a group of people some food here and clothing there expands into a true ministry that goes further than providing one-time needs.  John and Karen take the reader on a harrowing journey of transformation, where it is necessary for all-involved to change.  It can't just be about fixing or transforming the less fortunate.  Transformation must occur for the "giver" as well.  A true ministry, as presented by John and Karen, cannot be a ministry TO or FOR the homeless but must be a ministry WITH the homeless if any real progress/success is to be achieved.

I found this book to be a real heart-clenching piece.  I think that so often those of us to live in relative comfort and prosperity have no real grasp of the difficulties of living on the streets and how hard it is to get back on your feet.  A few dollars here or a one-night volunteering session at a soup kitchen can help us shake our "middle-class guilt" for awhile, but are we simply conducting "drive by charity?"  The kind of ministry pursued by John and Karen's churches isn't one that every church is going to be able to pursue.  For example, my church, situated in a rural town of 220 people, isn't going to address issues of poverty and/or homelessness in the same manner that a church located in an urban area can/will.  However, I think that the point comes across just the same.  For a truly successful, ministry with the less fortunate in our community, we need to see those we are helping as on an equal plane with use--we are all addicted to SOMETHING (money, busy-ness, clothes, leadership, etc.) and we all have some kind of transformation to undertake to achieve a spiritual high-ground.  The message is clear: leave your judgment at the door.  Get to know those you're seeking to aid. Leave behind prejudices and stereotypes. And most importantly, listen.