In a series of reflections focussed on his uneducated yet hard-working Mennonite family and touching on childhood exploits from shoplifting and go-kart racing to the juvenile fear of dying (which spontaneously arises during the rehearsal for an elementary school Christmas concert), Lloyd Ratzlaff takes readers on a journey from youth to philosophical maturity. Combining elegy and joyful nostalgia in a series of poetic essays, Ratzlaff recounts the struggles of his youth before analyzing his first marriage, his time at seminary school and as a minister, and examining life as the parent of adult children and closest confidante of a terminally ill friend.
Never straying far from his spiritual probing, the essays are informed largely by nature and the changing seasons which influence Ratzlaff’s life in seemingly magical ways. Small enlightenments arise from his interactions with the natural world, ranging from a spring equinox marking the seventh anniversary of his father’s death to the author’s ritual of waking to the songs of a robin who comes each spring to live on the riverbank across St. Henry Avenue. Even a small gopher scurrying off and standing like a signpost between graves signals an exploration of mortality.
Humour and honesty define this spiritual journey, as the boy who grew up speaking an ethnically Mennonite language discovers that the very rigidity and unease of this tongue will become, in part, the catalyst for his own writing and part of his spiritual movement as he treads his endless path toward the present. Bindy’s Moon invites readers to experience the challenges posed by scepticism and the simultaneous desire to believe, weighing the darkness of doctrinarism against the endless energy of the spirt. Ratzlaff gives us a unique example of what so many have experienced, combining humour, quiet reflection, and pearls of carefully considered wisdom, in a poignant prairie coming-of-age autobiography.