Author Archives: Jendi Reiter

Ash Wednesday Meditations


Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian penitential season of Lent. This is often a time of great joy and liberation for me, when I try to give up not just a worldly pleasure or two, but those more subtle attachments (usually some form of works-righteousness) that seem outwardly commendable but actually are taking me further away from God. This year, for instance, I’m giving up “Queer as Folk“, the Episcopal Church (no, they’re not the same thing), and having unnecessary opinions.

What does it mean to give up my church? I think it means continuing to pray for it, but ceasing to worry what will become of it. Continuing in loyalty to the vision that made me join–a church that values intellectual inquiry, diversity of beliefs, and the worship of God through the arts and the sacraments as well as through words and concepts–while recognizing that my primary loyalty is to Jesus, and I have to go where he is worshipped, first of all.


As a dear friend reminded me today, Christian community is not optional. We are called to be the body of Christ, so we cannot worship solo. And yet, this Lenten season, I feel a deep call to withdraw from “church” because worrying about the church, arguing within the church, and longing for full acceptance by the church have all become crutches that I use to avoid relying on God alone. It’s time to go where there are no words, where certainty gives way to faith.

Leaving my parish feels like a painful divorce. I’m not ready for a new relationship. I went to a Catholic church today with some friends for the imposition of ashes. For a moment during the service, I really did feel like all the strangers there were my family, because we all loved Jesus together.

Weren’t the desert saints also members of that body, even if they practiced their faith in solitude? In a much less ambitious way, I need to turn inward, but I believe I am still connected to my fellow Christians, in my old parish and beyond. Or maybe I’m making a big mistake. For me, Lent has always been about the freedom to make such mistakes in search of God. I could give up sex, chocolate, and the sight of Gale Harold‘s nude posterior, but if I still think I’m saved by expressing all the right opinions about the Trinity, I’ve missed the point of salvation by grace alone.

From the Book of Common Prayer:


Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


(Being able to get the entire BCP and a sing-along version of the hymnal online is almost too much temptation for me never to return to church. Call it liturgy porn.)

Well…I’ve just spent an hour writing about everything I was supposed to give up…sin sin sin. Back to you, Tom.


Ash-Wednesday
by T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief t
ransit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Walter Mosley’s Advice to Novelists (from Poets & Writers Magazine)

Best-selling author Walter Mosley lays out some strategies for the first-time novelist in the latest issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. The full article is not yet available online, but all the writers who read this blog should be subscribers anyway — what are you waiting for? Here are some highlights to whet your appetite:

The most important thing I’ve found about writing is that it is primarily an unconscious activity….I mean that a novel is larger than your head (or conscious mind). The connections, mood, metaphors, and experiences that you call up while writing will come from a place deep inside you. Sometimes you will wonder who wrote those words. Sometimes you will be swept up by a fevered passion relating a convoluted journey through your protagonist’s ragged heart. These moments are when you have connected to some deep place within you, a place that harbors the zeal that made you want to write in the first place.

The way you get to this unconscious place is by writing every day. Or not even writing. Some days you may be rewriting, rereading, or just sitting there scrolling back and forth through the text. This is enough to bring you back into the dream of your story.

What, you ask, is the dream of a story? This is a mood and a continent of thought below your conscious mind; a place that you get closer to with each foray into the words and worlds of your novel….

****************
Self-restraint is what makes it possible for society to exist. We refrain, most of the time, from expressing our rage and lust. Most of us do not steal or murder or rape. Many words come into our minds that we never utter — even when we’re alone. We imagine terrible deeds but push them out of our thoughts before they’ve had a chance to emerge fully….

The writer, however, must loosen the bonds that have held her back all these years. Sexual lust, hate for your own children, the desire to taste the blood of your enemy — all of these things and many more must, at times, crowd the writer’s mind….

Your characters will have ugly sides to them; they will be, at times, sexually deviant, bitter, racist, cruel.

“Sure,” you say. “The antagonists, the bad guys in my book will be like that but not the heroes and heroines.”

Not so.

The story you tell, the characters you present, will all have dark sides to them. If you want to write believable fiction, you will have to cross over the line of your self-restraint and revel in the words and ideas that you would never express in your everyday life….

****************

Another source of restraint for the writer is the use of personal confession and the subsequent guilt that often arises from it. Many writers use themselves, their families, and friends as models for the characters they portray….She (the writer) wades in, telling the story in all of its truth and ugliness but then, feeling guilt, backs away from it, muddying the water….

This would-be novelist has betrayed herself in order that she not tell the story that has been clawing its way out from her core. She would rather not commit herself to the truth that she has found in the rigor of writing every day….

[But] you should wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have rewritten the text twenty times the characters may have developed lives of their own, completely separate from the people you based them on in the beginning.

A whole book of writing advice from Mosley, This Year You Write Your Novel, is forthcoming from Hachette Book Group in April. (But do I have time to read it and follow his advice to write 90 minutes a day? And here I felt so proud of myself for writing once a week!)

Novel Writing Advice from Caro Clarke

When I tell people I’m writing a novel, their first question is usually, “What’s it about?” (Not “Are you a masochist or something?”, which would be the logical question for anyone who had first-hand experience of the process.) I usually dodge by saying it’s a “family saga,” because as yet I have no idea which of its several storylines is the main one.

A friend recently directed me to this very useful series of articles by Caro Clarke, originally written for the magazine NovelAdvice. Clarke’s got my number in essay #9, “Pacing Anxiety or, How to stop padding and plot!” She distinguishes between the premise of a novel (e.g. “timid Jenny moves to Alaska to open a B&B”) and the plot, which is the actual conflict that drives the action. Most beginning writers have only a premise, Clarke says, and so they find themselves without anything to say once they’ve set up the scene:


Your premise implies that Jenny, feeling stifled, heads to Alaska to improve her life. Your plot, therefore, is about a woman who creates a better life for herself by accepting challenge, and everything you write has to develop to this resolution.

Challenge implies battling something, overcoming opposition, and this is the heart of novel writing. Fiction is about the challenges that the protagonist either triumphs over or is defeated by (EMMA or MADAM BOVARY, for example). A novel must have conflict, not just in its overarching idea, but in every single scene. Your premise is merely the novel’s opening action.

So far, I have the opposite problem. My inability to choose the book’s central conflict means that I have 100+ pages of scenes that develop the characters and help me understand their voices and motivations, but I’m still very far from throwing these people together into the confrontation that I originally understood as the linchpin of the story. For pity’s sake, the character who has taken over the book was supposed to be dead before it even started!

However, this early in the game, I feel that too much writing is a better problem than too little. Maybe only a quarter of these scenes will make it into the book, but I’ll still know something about the characters that I couldn’t have discovered any other way. From essay #3, “Don’t get it right the first time,” it looks like Clarke would agree.

Poem: “Melting”


Snow is melting on the breast of the hill
like milk, the comforting familiar sour smell
of the waking body rises from the earth

and I, who have gone through every day delirious
into featureless night, stunned by the drill 
      and whine
of the frantic machinery of my mind

never resting nor reflecting, conscious yet 
      unconscious
as a passenger all night waiting for flight
to a steel city whose name he can’t recall–

in waiting to see you I find my ease
and lightness, the way the wind suddenly lifts 
      a leaf
from the still hard ground, or the shining smear 
      of rain

streams down the sunlit glass, the drops of water
such fertile transient sparks. It’s a gift
I don’t know how to hold.

Like honey it’s too rich for reality,
too protean to grasp, too sticky to get free 
      altogether:
it changes things, stains them with sweetness.

All I know is I can’t sit with my back to the sunset
in this high sterile chamber, the entire mortal show
of vanishing light only seen on my walls in 
      reflection.

So let a warmer wind play on the harp of the 
      bare trees
and the branches fill up with leaves like notes:
I, too, will sing.

Not smooth and not solid is the crust of the earth
when thawing water cracks and wrinkles 
      the ground.
Our feet quickly grow muddy, heavier to lift.

But above us the frosted trees drop their 
      common diamonds
of melting ice: not imperishable, but in lovely 
      abundance.
And so it goes on, moment by moment.


         from A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003)


Losing Our Confidence in Love

The Washington Post today printed a revealing excerpt from Laura Sessions Stepp’s forthcoming book, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. Her research suggests that though many young women are sexually active and empowered, they’ve given up on the idea of true love. Women are separating sex from intimacy for many reasons: fear of rejection, career ambitions that leave no time to work on a relationship, or a concept of feminism as incompatible with emotional vulnerability and dependence on a partner.


A national survey of 18-to-29-year-olds by the Pew Research Center reported that almost 60 percent were not in committed relationships and the majority of those were not interested in being committed. Young women even have phrases for couples, frequently spoken with a touch of derision: They’re “joined at the hip,” or “married.”

Absent old-fashioned dating, which has virtually disappeared, the alternative for these young women is hooking up, which can happen in any semi-private place and includes anything from kissing to intercourse. The beauty of hooking up is that it carries no commitment, and this is huge, for being emotionally dependent on a lover is what scares these young women the most.

To tell a man “I need you” is like saying “I’m incomplete without you.” A young man might say that and sound affectionate. But to an ambitious young woman, who has been taught to define power on her terms and defend it against all comers, need signals weakness.

Stepp contends that the decline of traditional dating will have unintended consequences for women’s ability to find and maintain lasting relationships.


“In traditional boyfriend-girlfriend relationships, you begin to understand how someone else thinks about things,” says Robert Blum, who chairs the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University. “You learn to compromise, and not to say the first thing on your mind. You learn how to say you’re sorry and accept other people’s apologies.”

These things are essential to being happily married and raising children, both of which young women say they want someday. They are best learned within a romantic relationship, in Blum’s view, because the young person is motivated by the romance to learn them.

Lloyd Kolbe, a health education professor at Indiana University-Bloomington, agrees. He still remembers his first love in high school, how he worked at being honest, decent and caring — in short, worthy of her.

“Hooking up is purposely uncaring,” he says. “If they turn off the emotional spigot when they’re young, what will happen to them as older adults?”

Women’s reluctance to invest in romantic partnerships, says Stepp, also has to do with a lack of role models, both in their own lives and in the media. They’re not being shown how intimacy builds and personal growth occurs during a long-term relationship, nor how successful couples learn to interact in a healthy way.


Some have lived through the divorce of their parents. Or they witness disputes between Mom and Dad yet are not privy to the negotiations their parents undertake to resolve these differences. Although Mom and Dad may say they love each other, young women report that they rarely see their parents hug, hold hands, act playfully or do other things that sustain love.

They have the same complaints about the way love is portrayed in the movies or on television. A college junior says, “We never see anything positive about Hollywood relationships. It’s beginning to seem normal to get married on flings and then get divorced and have random babies.” Evie Lalangas wonders, “Have you ever noticed how romantic comedies are all about falling in love or breaking up? I want to say, ‘Show me the rest of your life!’ “

What if, after hesitating, young women enter into a relationship? What does that look like? How do they make it last? Since they haven’t dated much, if at all, it’s difficult for them to know.

Order the book here.    

Prison Poet “Conway” Speaks

Since last fall, I’ve been corresponding with an incarcerated writer at a supermax prison in central California who discovered our Winning Writers website. “Conway” (he’s asked that I not use his real name) is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for receiving stolen property, under California’s three-strikes law that imposes life sentences for a nonviolent crime if the defendant has two or more prior felony convictions. The Supreme Court (wrongly, in my view) ruled in the 2003 case Lockyer v. Andrade that such mandatory sentences do not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

From what I can tell from Conway’s rap sheet, his priors were burglary and grand theft auto. Without access to his case history, it’s not for me to judge whether he ought to be at liberty. Nonetheless, as I read his letters, I was struck by his descriptions of unnecessarily brutal prison conditions and his drive to better himself through literature and art, despite the constant interference of guards confiscating his books and writing supplies.

I’ll be posting his poems and excerpts from his letters on this blog from time to time. I’m not in a position to vouch for the accuracy of everything he writes. Read them for yourself and see what rings true. My goal is simply to provoke further inquiry about how we ignore the humanity of the incarcerated.

Cell Widow
by “Conway”

Black spiders build traps on my window,
Their intricate veins with morning dew glow,
gray butterfly caught in deadly net,
a victim devoured by my bloodthirsty pet;

On lines creeping it approaches and overtakes,
the gift of life so simply forsakes,
captured before destiny can finish its flight,
dread spider consumes with sweet delight;

Bonded to be drained drop by drop alone,
abandoned heart bled dry to the bone,
as I watched the tiny wings crumble away,
I felt life’s loss, as I do every day…

***

Hole

steel teeth, cell doors
concrete tongue tasting
my soul wasting
inside locked corridors
concrete wasting
my soul tongue tasting
cell teeth, steel doors
locked inside corridors
wasting my soul
out of control…

***

Life Seeks Relief

This wise old owl must not
be so wise I fear,
for it has chosen to build
a nest in the most absurd
of spots precarious,
the tall menacing tower
where gunners seek targets
human, on barbed perimeter.
A lair of predators on hunt
perpetual, a death stalk
from above, in chain link
spiderweb’ belligerent
boundary of nettle surrounds;
“The no man’s land”
Yet unperturbed/unbiased
this odd creature, then bizarre
occurs to me, as I stare
out my cell window, I realize
how safe the chosen roost,
for the gun towers that menace
my mind, are no threat to
this nocturnal interloper:
Those large eyes stare back
accusingly, every time
I check to assure myself,
unwise owl is safely rested,
realizing it is I who is
unwisely nested…

Fun With Sloganizer

A few years back, I was disappointed when the Episcopal Church USA changed its slogan from “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” to “The Episcopal Church: We’re Here for You”. It just sounded too much like McDonald’s “Have It Your Way”. (Apparently, someone must have agreed with me, since their website has now reverted to the old tagline.) Next time the modernizing spirit grabs them, though, Sloganizer.net is ready. Just type in a word or phrase (nouns work best) and this free computer program will generate a slogan that at times is disturbingly apt. Be warned, it can be addictive. My favorites so far:

“Naughty little Episcopal Church”
“Episcopal Church will be for you whatever you want it to be”
“Episcopal Churchtastic!”
“Episcopal Church. Impossible is nothing.” (and now, a word from Bishop Yoda)
“When you say Episcopal Church you’ve said it all”
“Episcopal Church never lies”
“Ooh la la, Episcopal Church”

The I-Monk’s Ten Questions About the Bible

Reverend Sam at Elizaphanian has posted his responses to the Internet Monk’s Ten Questions on the Bible. I would perpetuate this meme with my own answers except that Rev. Sam has already said exactly what I would say. (OMG, I’m agreeing with someone – I must be losing my edge.) My favorite is #5: “Q: Is the Bible a human book? A: All books are human. There is a docetic suspicion lurking behind this question – an assumption that because something is human it cannot also bear the stamp of divinity.” (Docetism was the heresy that Jesus was solely divine, and his humanity only an appearance.)

FYI, the ten questions are:

1. State briefly what you believe about the Bible.
2. How is the Bible inspired?
3. So is the book of Judges inspired, or only the Gospels?
4. How is the Bible authoritative?
5. Is the Bible a human book?
6. Are there aspects of the Bible that are not divine?
7. Why do you call the Bible a conversation?
8. What do you believe about canonization?
9. Do you reject the inspiration of some books?
10. Anything else you want to say?

I’d especially love to hear Shawna, Hugo, and Eve Tushnet answer these questions, as well as anyone who wants to leave a comment below — please identify the tradition you come from, and the one you belong to now, which may not be the same thing, of course!

Saving Jesus (Episode 5): Like a Virgin

This week’s installment of Saving Jesus at my church applied its revisionist sledgehammer to the doctrines of the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation. It would be too easy to make fun of the worksheet, which appears to have been written by unemployed former Soviet re-education camp counselors. So-called discussion questions included “Name some of the reasons why the virgin birth is not to be taken literally” and “What are some of the words that were confused by the early translators and writers [of the Bible]?”

On the DVD, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong averred with equal certainty that we should “stop thinking of God as a great big parent figure up in the sky — a supernatural being who is external to life” and instead imagine God as a life force that is present in all of us. The difference between Jesus and ourselves is one of degree, not of kind. As a logical matter, said Spong, Jesus could not be fully human and also different in kind from us, as the church has mistakenly considered him to be.

I’ve got to give Spong credit for understanding why the Incarnation is such a radical concept, although his anti-supernatural bias makes him reject it. Precisely because there is a separation between humans and God, such that the divine light within us is clouded, Jesus can’t be fully divine and also fully human if we understand human as meaning “just like us”, i.e. no more than us. Spong closes the gap by eliminating God, insofar as God is distinct from His creation. But at least he sees the central problem, which is that the difference between the holy God of the Bible and us mere mortals is so great that our brains freeze when we try to picture them coexisting in the same person.

I’ll confess right now that I believe in the Incarnation — as history, not just metaphor — because it makes me happy. Not because I can prove it through archaeological, textual or scientific evidence. For Spong & co., this makes me an idiot. On the DVD, Marcus Borg said the best we can hope for is “post-critical naivete”– though our critical intellect says these miracles couldn’t possibly have happened, our mature faith returns to find value in the stories as metaphor, bracketing the question of historical truth.

I suddenly felt more sympathy for the Saving Jesus project after hearing this, because it reminded me of where I was around the time of my conversion. I was totally convinced that the gospel of grace presented in St. Paul’s letters was the truest picture of human nature and our relationship to God that I could find. But was it intellectually honest to infer a historical truth from a psychological one? Ultimately I threw up my hands and said, “Well, if it didn’t exactly happen the way it said in the Bible, I still believe with all my heart that God is the kind of God who would love us enough to die for us, and that gets me most of the way there.”

Somehow since then I’ve become furiously certain that it actually happened more or less the way the Gospels said. I can’t rely confidently on God’s forgiveness unless I believe, first of all, that there is a real, personal, loving God, and when I start to doubt that, I’m forced to cling to the idea that He actually died to close the cosmic rift created by human sin. I wasn’t able to save myself, so I can’t rely on a Jesus who’s only the product of my imagination (even if I do ask the characters in my novel for advice on my love life).

Here’s a paradox for liberals to chew on: If religious truth is “what works for me,” what if the only thing that works for me is to believe my religion is objectively true?

Alegria Imperial: “Fooled Heart”


Stone on my path
perhaps? But a sparrow
side-lain, staring.

The flight quite swift
arrow-taut toward water
fooled its foolish heart.

How could pea-eyes
know traps between air
and sky could seem nothing?

Tiny hearts spurt, sighting
their longing: to a sweet sparrow
wings on water.

Flitting straight on,
heart on wings
the water a beak within —

but glass
is also water.