Kruse's Keys: Read A Day in the Life of Abed Salama to Understand the Origin of a Father's Anger

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My 14-year-old daughter loves history and is a voracious reader and had been asking me questions about Israel and Palestine and I realized that much to my embarrassment I actually didn’t recall much from my high school history classes beyond the bare bones facts so I pulled this unread tome off our book shelves.  

Jewish-American author Nathan Thrall first wrote this story as a long form journalistic piece for the New York Review of Books and I can’t imagine this made any friends within the Israeli government. He expanded that article into this book that earned him a Pulitzer in 2024 for general nonfiction. Thrall is a masterful researcher and story-teller–my daughter didn’t realize that it wasn’t fiction until she’d nearly finished it.  

The author uses a singular event–a horrific school bus accident–to extrapolate the dizzying, dehumanizing level of bureaucracy and indignities Palestinians endure living in the West Bank.  Along the way, he delves into the broader history of the conflict at a surface level.  In peeling back the myriad onion layers that led to a Palestinian father losing his son, Thrall offers the reader a truncated history of how the current system was created.   

The book’s strength comes from the author’s focus on the humanity of “the other’ (an idea of which I wrote at length in my review of Ayah Ahktar’s Homeland Elegies (my DoD Read review is here) which addresses the broader idea of “they groups”).  In A Day there are grotesque caricatures of either side–only individua  and wrnechingly personal snapshots in time of a father’s grief or a mother’s disorienting isolation. Indeed, Thrall’s eye is for the specific and his writing leaves the reader reeling from what a life is like spent dying by a thousand paper cuts of checkpoint, colored IDs, permit denials, legal obfuscations and bureaucratic hurdles–all just to exist. It becomes readily apparent how two people groups’ identities have become tied to one other–for the worse. As the main character notes in Homeland Elegies: “Constantly defining yourself in opposition to what others say about you is not self-knowledge. It’s confusion.” 

In crafting a book as eulogy, Thrall offers something that often gets buried, blurred and lost in the 10-second news clips and scrolling videos cycle on this conflict: humanity. When headlines only capture the horrid of one side in a conflict it becomes impossible to see “the other” as anything but a monolith.  Of course, this book is decidedly only one side of the story but that should not be taken as criticism.  As I sit with my 14 year old daughter in the midst of a barrage of global tragedies (to include the abhorrent October 2024 Hamas attacks), I hope to instill in her the value of reading and listening to one side of the story, and then another, and then another until she can form for herself a more nuanced (and ideally empathetic) understanding of something as visceral as a father’s grief amidst his child’s death in a fiery bus crash on a the blackened side of a West Bank road.  

Next Up: For a deeper dive in the Israel-Palestine history, we are reading "The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East."

Kruse's Keys: Read "Practicing the Way" to Change Your Life

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 Practicing the Way (Audible).  Last year we read Comer’s “Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (my review is here) and it was life changing. https://kruzoo.blogspot.com/2025/07/kruses-key-read-ruthless-elimination-of.html

This book is for those who read Ruthless and ask themselves:, so how do we actually implement an unhurried and contemplative life? Practicing the Way lays out a path that is less rigid implementation and legalistic system and instead is a call first and foremost to eat Jesus’ dust.  This refers to the Jewish practice of following and imitating a rabbi so closely that you literally would be walking in his dust were you a first century Jew following him on a dirt road.  This act of following was called apprenticeship and this is what we are called to as Christian.  It’s noteworthy that the term Christian appears only 3 times in the New Testament, while the word for "Apprentice" (mathētēs)appears 269 times. In this case words matter because they translate to actions (or inactions) in our daily lives.  

These actions are what Comers describes as our daily practices and grappling with them gets to the heart of the tension between legalism and grace.  He frames this with Dallas Williard apt statement that "grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning."  This daily effort is what fuels a believer’s transformation and casts aside the sense of entitlement that comes from the idea of earning one’s salvation.  Importantly, this daily bread is not the world’s way filled with hurry, coercion and pride but Jesus’s that is prayer-centric, humble, unhurried, sacrificial, and contemplative.  

All of this is easier said than done in a world full of distractions but Comer advocates that we must keep memento mori at the forefront of our minds.  Remembering that we must die one day is not meant to be morbid but rather to shift our focus on the eternal–this is the call we see countless times in the Bible to ‘look up.’  We do this over a life time of failure and progress in the right direction in these practices (quoted from the book):

• Sabbath: A 24-hour period of rest, delight, and worship designed to counter the culture of hurry and exhaustion.

• Solitude and Silence: Withdrawing from noise and people to be alone with God, often emphasizing early morning, undistracted time.

• Prayer: Viewing prayer not just as a duty, but as communion with God (described as "looking at God, looking at you, in love").

• Scripture: Regular reading and meditation on the Bible to renew the mind and align with truth.

• Fasting: Abstaining from food or other comforts to cultivate self-control, hunger for God, and solidarity with the poor.

• Community: Engaging in deep, authentic relationships with other believers for accountability and support.

• Generosity: Practicing radical giving to combat consumerism and greed.

• Service: Actively loving others through acts of service, mirroring Jesus’ humility.

• Witness: Sharing the Gospel and living out the way of Jesus in the world. 

Our men’s group at church also went through an 8 week study on it which truthfully I probably need to do about five more times to begin digesting the depth and richness of incorporating this into my daily rhythms. (Practicing the Way Course Trailer).  But what I continue to appreciate it’s that at its core Practicing the Way of Jesus is simple:  "Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did." It is only in my own human weakness and wandering that I benefit and grow from a structure that helps me grow to be someone who does these three things.  

Finally, one of the observations that stuck with me most was Comer’s observation of the way life’s distractions–aren’t.  Take the case of our kids:

"Children are like monastic bells. They call us away from our own agendas, our own egos, and our own 'spiritual' plans, and call us back to the present moment to practice the way of Jesus in love." 

I love that idea–children as monastic bells calling us back to the present moment.  As a dad to six kids, I needed that reminder.  And it’s given me fresh ears to hear my little ones as they call to me to ‘come home’. 

Key Quotes:

• "It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon... It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." 

• "Children are like monastic bells. They call us away from our own agendas, our own egos, and our own 'spiritual' plans, and call us back to the present moment to practice the way of Jesus in love." 

• "He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial."

• "Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning." — Dallas Willard

• "He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Key References For Further Study:

• Practicing the Way, John Mark Comer.

• The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard.

• Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

• The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson.

• Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton.

• Letters from a Modern Mystic, Frank Laubach.

• The Monasticism of Daily Life Ronald Rolheiser

Kruse's Keys: Read Jayber Crow to Appreciate Life's Sacred Spaces

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(Kindle Read) Published in 2020–60 years after his first novel Nathan Coulter–Jayber Crow is the 7th book (depending on how you count them) in Wendell Berry’s Port WIlliams series. Port Williams is a fictional town in eastern Kentucky and its creation has been the work and meditation of Berry’s life. There’s no author who has created so complete a miniverse–not just a town and a setting but an interconnected, overlapping anc, a omplementary web of characters (the “membership”) and stories. Faulkner did it masterfully with his Yoknapatawpha County but with nowhere near the sheer number of stories and characters.

Jayber Crow is the name of the main character and covers the arc of his life from a young orphaned boy to an aging, partially retired town barber looking back on his life. His life takes a wandering route from the orphanage barber apprentice to seminary dropout to prison chain gang to eventual Port Williams barber, gravedigger, and church custodian. Jayber’s physical wanderings provide a backdrop for his own spiritual journey in which he struggles with and internalizes what it means to believe in Jesus:

"What is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord’s Prayer... It means that your will and God’s will may not be the same. It means there’s a good possibility that you won’t get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer. It means you may be crucified."

In Jayber’s case, much of his suffering is in silence as he pines for a woman he will never have–Mattie Chatham–who is married to a man who is antithetical to the very essence of life in Port Williams. Jayber’s love for Mattie morphs into some slightly weird territory at one point as he forswears all other women but ultimately Berry brings it back to the firmer familiar Port WIlliams series territory of meditation on the death of farming in America. And in this novel’s case, farming’s death symbolizes the loss of something even more precious–the loss of sacred spaces. As Jayber noted later in his life as he struggled with his own faith and its role within the larger notion of organized religion–it’s these very spaces where Jesus spent his ministry:

"Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one... to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures... toward the membership of all that is here."

It’s noteworthy that Jayber Crow is by no means a religious novel–there is plenty else there for a secular or naturalist reader to ponder and appreciate. In my own personal Port WIlliams ranking it occupies second place behind the standout Hannah Coulter (my review is here of one of the best novels I’ve ever read).

The Port William Series (Publication Order)

Nathan Coulter (1960) — (Covers 1929–1941). My short review is here.
A Place on Earth (1967) — (Covers 1945). My full review is here.
The Memory of Old Jack (1974) — (Covers 1952, with flashbacks to 1860)
The Wild Birds (1986) — (Short Stories covering 1930–1967)
Remembering (1988) — (Covers 1976)
Fidelity (1992) — (Short Stories covering 1935–1990)
Watch with Me (1994) — (Short Stories covering 1908–1932)
A World Lost (1996) — (Covers 1944)
Jayber Crow (2000) — (Covers 1914–1986). My full review you just read.
That Distant Land (2004) — (Collected Stories covering 1888–1986)
Hannah Coulter (2004) — (Covers 1922–2000). My full review is here.
Andy Catlett: Early Travels (2006) — (Covers 1943)
A Place in Time (2012) — (Short Stories covering 1864–2008)
How It Went (2022) — (Short Stories covering 1932–202)

Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story (2025) — (Covers 1906, narrated from the 2020s)

Key Quotes

Location 196
Context: Jayber’s first "awakening" to being seen by another.

"The brief, laughing look that she had given me made me feel extraordinarily seen, as if after that I might be visible in the dark."

Location 345
Context: The river as a metaphor for the passage of time and memory.

"The river, the river itself, leaves marks but bears none. It is only water flowing in a path that other water has worn."

Location 436 & 439
Context: The inverse relationship between time remaining and memory accumulated--getting older.

"Back there at the beginning, as I see now, my life was all time and almost no memory. And now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time."

Location 485
Context: Finding happiness in the simple dignity of being required by one's community.

"It was a time under a shadow, and yet I remember being happy, for I had responsibilities then, and I knew that I was useful."

Location 514
Context: Jayber's perspective on the nature of oral stories and history

"Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told. As almost any barber can testify, there is also more than needs to be told, and more than anybody wants to hear."

Location 695
Context: The moment a stranger (E. Lawler) is integrated into the "circle" of the community.

"She was waiting. I did not understand that she was waiting, but she was. And then one day as her classmates were joining hands to play some sort of game, one of the girls broke the circle. She held out her hand to the newcomer to beckon her in. And E. Lawler ran into the circle and joined hands with the others."

Part II: The Education of a "Man Outside"
Location 900
Context: A stark realization of what "Thy will be done" actually means for someone

"What is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord’s Prayer... It means that your will and God’s will may not be the same. It means there’s a good possibility that you won’t get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer. It means you may be crucified."

Location 928
Context: Jayber’s critique of the "talky professors" at the seminary who lacked the weight of lived doubt.

"The problem was that they’d had no doubts. They had not asked the questions that I was asking and so of course they could not answer them. They told me I needed to have more faith; I needed to believe."

Location 1284
Context: The intellectual isolation of a seeker.

"It seemed to me that I hungered and thirsted to hear somebody talk about books who knew more about them than I did."

Location 1747
Context: The unchanging nature of home.

"But it seemed to me that even if everything had been changed, I would have recognized it by the look of the sky."

Location 1892 & 1915
Context: Describing a man of total presence—likely Burley Coulter.

"There was nothing glancing or sidling about the way he looked at you. He looked right through your eyes, right into you, as a man looks at you who is willing for you to look right into him."

Location 2142
Context: Country humor/justification for a good drink

"His favorite Bible verse was, 'Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities'—which he quoted frequently when he was sober."

Part III: The Membership and the Rememberers
Location 2385
Context: A tribute to the elders like Old Jack Beechum and Mat Feltner who carry the town's history.

"They were rememberers, carrying in their living thoughts all the history that such places as Port William ever have. I listened to them with all my ears... Things went to the grave with them that will never be known again."

Location 2519
Context: Jayber sees Mattie, really sees here for the first time

"A neat, bright, pretty, clear-spirited girl with all her feeling right there in her eyes."

Location 2585
Context: Athey Keith’s mathematical subtraction of a man's character.

"I knew that he had subtracted Troy Chatham’s talent as a basketball player from Troy Chatham, and had found not enough left over."

Location 2658 & 2672
Context: How war is felt in the hometowns

"Where do dead soldiers die who are killed in battle? They die at home—in Port William and thousands of other little darkened places... This new war... would be a test of the power of machines against people and places."

Location 2675 & 2678
Context: The impossibility of reconciling the Gospel with the machinery of war.

"I was glad enough that I had not become a preacher, and so would not have to go through a war pretending that Jesus had not told us to love our enemies... The thought of loving your enemies is opposite to war."

Location 2679 & 2786
Context: On the visibility of a community and the endurance of grief.

"Maybe you don’t have to love your enemies. Maybe you just have to act like you do... I don’t believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure."

Location 2788 & 2823
Context: Mat Feltner on enduring loss and being present.

"'What can’t be helped must be endured,' Mat Feltner said... 'All I could do was hug him and cry.'"

Part IV: Organizations vs. The Mystery
Location 2863 & 2880
Context: On "church religion" versus a lived, mysterious faith.

"Roy lived too hard up against mystery to be without religion. But like many of the men, he was without church religion... It was a disappointment like a nail in your shoe. It wasn’t completely disabling, but it couldn’t be ignored either."

Location 2989-3001
Context: A scathing critique of seminary students who have a "high opinion of God but a low opinion of His works."

"They had imagined the church, which is an organization, but not the world, which is an order and a mystery. To them, the church did not exist in the world where people earn their living and have their being... They made me see how cut off I was. Even when I was sitting in the church, I was a man outside."

Location 3023
Context: The hidden benefit of a dull sermon.

"Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons."

Location 3330
Context: The integrity of a man whose words match his thoughts.

"There was never much room between what he said and what he thought."

Location 3404-3419
Context: The "unraveling" of the old fabric of communal work via the "new way" of industrial farming.

"The new way of farming was a way of dependence... on machines and fuel and chemicals... we didn’t want to know, that it was the demanding circumstances that had kept us together."

Location 3437
Context: The balance of how farms used to operate.

"The law of the farm was in the balance between crops (including hay and pasture) and livestock."

Part V: Love, Eternity, and the "Unorganized" Religion
Location 4604 & 4615
Context: The failure of love in time, contrasted with its fulfillment in eternity.

"Why doesn’t love succeed? Hate succeeds... I saw that Mattie was not merely desirable, but desirable beyond the power of time to show... she carried in her the presence of eternity."

Location 4625, 4644 & 4678
Context: The "terrible prayer" and the realization that God loves the physical world.

"'Thy will be done,' I said, and seemed to feel my own bones tremble in the grave... My mistake was ignoring the verses that say God loves the world."

Location 4679-4690
Context: Christ’s Gethsemane prayer as a testament to his mortality and the "unreasonable" prayer for Port William.

"That He prayed that prayer at all showed how human He was... I prayed unreasonably, foolishly, hopelessly, that everybody in Port William might be blessed and happy."

Location 4709
Context: The heartbreak of loving the world.

"And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart."

Location 4990 & 5233
Context: How the interstate highway system changed america

"That shout of limitless joy, love unbound at last, our only native tongue... More even than television, the interstate brought the modern world into Port William."

Location 5342
Context: An honest admission of the difficulty of Christian love.

"It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy."

Location 5993
Context: Jayber’s defining credo: Christ came to found an "unorganized" religion.

"Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one... to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures... toward the membership of all that is here."

Part VI: The Final Reckoning
Location 6197
Context: Wry observations on the modern "emergency to relax."

"The people are in an emergency to relax... They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee... They look neither left nor right."

Location 6600 & 6621
Context: The relationship between Earth, Hell, and Heaven; Jayber’s summary of himself.

"But the earth speaks to us of Heaven, or why would we want to go there?... I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith."

Location 6652-6655
Context: The definition of faith as the belief that nothing and no one is truly lost.

"A man of faith believes that the Man in the Well is not lost... His belief is a kind of knowledge beyond any way of knowing."

Location 6721
Context: The release of a forty-year-old hatred--forgiveness.

"I stood facing that man I had hated for forty years, and I did not hate him."

Location 6774 & 6775
Context: The final benediction: Mattie’s smile.  The power of a woman's smile.

"To know it’s being ruined is hard... She gave me the smile that I had never seen and will not see again in this world, and it covered me all over with light."