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Copywork
About This Passage
The preacher's prayer at the start of the party is one of the most theologically precise moments in the book. Notice two word choices. First, 'complicated and wonderful' — the preacher refuses to call friends simply wonderful, because to do so would be to lie. Friends are also complicated. Adding the word honors the truth. Second, 'the task you put down before us of loving each other the best we can.' The word 'task' is from the language of work, not the language of feeling. Loving each other is something we DO, something assigned. The closing phrase 'even as you love us' places the task within a Christian framework — we are loving each other because God is loving us, and our love is a response rather than an original. Copying this passage teaches a writer how to deliver theological precision through specific word choices, and how a single sentence can carry a whole ethical philosophy.
We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. We appreciate the task you put down before us of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the chapter. Then identify the moment the party stops being a celebration and becomes a test. What signal does DiCamillo give us?
Discussion Questions
- The preacher's prayer uses the phrase 'the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other.' The word 'complicated' is the chapter's quietest but most important word. Analyze why DiCamillo includes it. What would the prayer lose if she had written only 'wonderful gifts'?
- The preacher calls loving each other a 'task.' This is work-language applied to love. Is DiCamillo making a theological claim that love is practice rather than feeling, and does this claim relate to the broader Christian tradition of caritas (agape love) as something you do rather than something you feel?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
relating to the study of God, religion, and what we owe to divine or ultimate reality
Item 2
the Latin word for imitation — in Christian theology, the practice of imitating God's love in one's own love for others
Item 3
the Latin word for the specific kind of love the New Testament calls agape — a self-giving, willed love that is an action rather than a feeling
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Critical Thinking
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