Mark Twain considered it his most important book, and his best book. It was fourteen years in the making, twelve years of research and two years of writing. The book is Joan of Arc, a book of which I had never heard.
Having only a sketchy acquaintance of Joan of Arc, I decided to read the story of this person who so enthralled Twain. One can feel Twain’s admiration, bewilderment and fascination in this run-on sentence.
“But Joan was competent in a law case at sixteen without ever having seen a law-book or a court-house before; she had no training in soldiership and no associations with it, yet she was a competent general in her first campaign; she was brave in her first battle, yet her courage had had no education—not even the education which a boy’s courage gets from never-ceasing reminders that it is not permissible in a boy to be a coward, but only in a girl; friendless, alone, ignorant, in the blossom of her youth, she sat week after week, a prisoner in chains, before her assemblage of judges, enemies hunting her to her death, the ablest minds in France, and answered them out of an untaught wisdom which overmatched their learning, baffled their tricks and treacheries with a native sagacity which compelled their wonder, and scored every day a victory against these incredible odds and camped unchallenged on the field.”
Still, Joan’s condemnation and death by fire were sealed before the trial even began.
Mark Twain’s fascination with Joan was a antidote to his pessimistic view of human nature. He believed that humans, although desiring freedom and liberty in thought and action, succumbed to the bondage of selfish motives. Joan represented the possibility that humans could be free of that bondage, even if they seldom were. Twain ends his book with the words, “she is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.”
We can trace some of the factors that go into the geniuses of Mozart, Madam Curie and Einstein, but how do we account for people like Joan of Arc and even even Jesus of Nazareth, who, coming from peasant stock, unlettered and inexperienced in the ways of the world, have led such extraordinary lives and have had such an impact on human history?
Nevertheless, in only focusing on those who display extraordinary talents, skills and courage, it is easy to overlook the everyday courage of people. As a minister, listening to the stories of others, the traumatic stories which every minister hears, I gained an appreciation for the quiet heroism of ‘ordinary’ people. People have dealt with so much that should have crushed them: death, addiction, divorce, rejection, abuse, dreams dashed, etc. I stand in awe at the tenacity of people to pick up the pieces of their lives and to move forward one step at a time. I find strength for my own journey when I remember what I call ‘the awesome tenacity of the human spirit.’ I think for the most part, we humans go through life not knowing what strength is in us until something turns up that calls out of us resources of which we were previously oblivious.
There is a magnificence in the ordinary lives of ordinary people, even living in ordinary times.
Bob Tucker
August 2009
St. Joan of Arc exemplified what Paul wrote in 1 Cor 1:27 that God “has chosen what is weak in the world to confound what is strong.”