Review
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Title: Both Things Are True
Author: Kate Holbrook
Publisher: BYU Maxwell Institute
Genre: Religious non-fiction
Year Published: 2023
Number of Pages: 151
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781639931804
Price: $12.99
Reviewed by Conor Hilton for the Association of Mormon Letters
It’s difficult to imagine a more fitting capstone to Kate Holbrook’s body of work than Both Things Are True. The very structure and creation of the book models and honors Kate, with many voices and people that Kate had touched in her life coming together to bring the final product together. Certainly, a piece of Kate’s legacy is and will continue to be her mentoring, collegiality, and participation in scholarship and Mormonism as a community. This legacy is embodied in the behind-the-scenes contributions of others to Both Things Are True, many folks working tirelessly to bring Kate’s thoughts and words to the rest of us, just like Kate had done for countless others throughout her career. That most of these people are women is another testimony to Kate’s commitment to valuing the lives, perspectives, and contributions of women from our past and in our present.
Reading Both Things Are True is a beautiful and bittersweet experience. The book is a testimony to the deeply grounded and deeply rooted faithfulness of Kate. And, inevitably, a reminder of the loss to her family, friends, and us all as a community, her death is. Sam Brown, Kate’s husband, writes the book’s “Epilogue,” which gives voice to some of this grief and beauty. Sam writes about listening to a podcast of one of Kate’s lectures days after Kate’s passing and moments after ‘planting’ their second daughter at college. “Then came that voice I knew as well as my own, the voice I would never hear again from her mortal mouth…As I strained in muddled sadness to know what would become of the balance of my life, I saw clearly that she had given that lecture in that forum so that I would hear it when I was drowning in grief as a newly widowing father” (139-40). The “Epilogue” gives voice to the grief that Sam experiences and allows the reader into that cathartic expression, thinking about the loss of Kate’s voice; after spending over a hundred pages with her and her voice.
As the title of the book suggests, Both Things Are True insists on duality, a both/and approach to faith and life. Throughout these essays and the interview that opens the book, Kate demonstrates simultaneously a generosity and open-heartedness to the experiences and perspectives of others AND an insistence on the truth of her experiences. Too often people choose one over the other, losing the truth that is found by insisting that you can hold both together.
One of the latter essays discusses forgiveness and memory. Kate writes, “It’s always our choice to allow charity to dig that grave and forgiveness to bury the evils of the past” (109). She’s alluding to a quote from Jane Neyman, an early pioneering saint, and highlighting the power that we have to bring charity into our lives. Kate can anticipate some of the common objections to this framework and follows this line almost immediately with the observation that Jane and other people’s stories “show us two main things that are true: Jesus makes forgiving and healing and improving all possible, and forgiving doesn’t have to mean forgetting. Often, we must remember” (109). Kate’s commitment to a deeply rooted, practical faith allows her to identify paradoxes that from some perspectives are distressing or challenging. And yet, from Kate’s perspective, these paradoxes are transformed into something liberating—the paradox opens pathways that felt closed previously.
Perhaps the essay from Both Things Are True that hit me the hardest was “Housework Is a Crucible of Discipleship.” Much of my portion of our household labor is housework—cleaning the kitchen, doing dishes, tidying everywhere, etc. This often feels like a soul-crushing chore, not something that might have anything to do with discipleship. Yet, Kate’s perspective is eye-opening. She writes, “I have lately taken to reading in the kitchen late in the evenings. Because the kitchen needs lots of cleaning every day when sitting there I inhabit a place that I have just cared for, and it feels deeply comforting to be there” (89). This leads Kate to a conclusion that links this labor to Adam laboring by the sweat of his brow and the ways that that labor brings us closer to creation and, therefore, the Creator. I’ll be working to embrace this mentality for years to come and will think about Kate’s words as I clean the kitchen, again and again and again.
The quote that best captures what strikes me as the heart of Kate’s faith is this, “I believe that both things are true: our Church is true, and it is living. It is perpetually becoming true” (48). For Kate, the Church was true. And the Church was perpetually becoming true; it is our work to be a part of that becoming. We help the church become true.
Both Things Are True is a moving, conversational, warm treasure of a book begging to be shared and discussed in a bustling kitchen; over some delicious chocolate cake (Kate’s recipe closes her final essay here). May this book spread more of Kate’s eyes-wide-open, generous, deeply rooted, practical faith to the rest of us.