Happy Birthday, Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing, writer extraordinaire and this year's recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, was born 88 years ago today in Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran). Her dad, who lost both a leg and his health in WWI, worked for the Imperial Bank of Persia. Her mom was trained as a nurse. Doris spend the first six years of her life in two magnificent Persian mountain towns- Kermanshah and Tehran.

In 1925, her parents, British citizens, bought a maize farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)which was never an economic success, but was deeply formative to the young Doris. At a tender age she regaled her little brother with passionate, adventurous stories centered in rural Africa. She was sent to a rigid convent school in town, followed by a girls' boarding school, from which she fled at age thirteen, to enter the work force. This ended Doris Lessing's formal education.

In the spring of 1980, I (Linda) was 25 years old and teaching a Women's Studies course at a community college in Indiana. The class read "The Golden Notebook"
(pub. 1962) with obvious relish. Protagonist Anna Wulf kept four notebooks of thoughts on her life-- red for political thoughts, blue for memories and dreams, yellow for fiction writing and black for desciptions of central Africa. Anna's goal ws to integrate them all (and hence all of herself) into one gold notebook.

That was a lovely spring for me. I liked teaching at night as a balance to pastoral ministry. Our first nephew was born in April and I remember joyfully writing "Jeffrey Andrew" on the board in big letters. We were preparing to move to Winston-Salem that fall, still the city dearest to my heart. My old class notes had these Doris Lessing quotes:

Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Laughter is by definition healthy.

Any human being anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents
and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

I have found it to be true that the older I've become, the better my
life has become.

We are all of us made by war, twisted and warped by war, but we seem to
forget it.

"Choose a quote," I had written on a test, "and write at least 500 words of response. Include some thoughts on issues that Doris Lessing has addressed in
"The Golden Notebook" such as : the rights of an individual in society, the role of a social critic pushing against cultural restraints, the identity of women in a male engineered world, your thoughts on racism and political responsibility toward 'the outsider'."

Twenty-seven + years later, I think that Doris Lessing's quotes and questions deserve another round of reflection and response as we honor her long, honest,
creative life, which began here in the mountains of Iran.

Happy Birthday, Doris!