A lenten project (2019)
Essays on faith, written during Lent in 2019.
- Lent 1: IntroductionLent arrives with a familiar feeling of obligation, a feeling that tugs at me though I have no reason to acknowledge or honor it. If I have ever believed, it hasn’t been for a long time. The word “Lent” is so simple, and I associate it so entirely with deprivation, abstinence, spiritual cleansing, that it hadn’t occurred to me until today to wonder where it came from. It’s a word that has come… Read more: Lent 1: Introduction
- The Long Run Belongs to Faith (Lent 2)She made the case for faith so well that I thought if someone had spoken like that to me when I was in college I would still believe.
- Forms of Faith (Lent 3)My mother said something close, once, to what O’Connor said to Corn. I don’t know how old I was–maybe 11 or 12–but I know I was young enough to be nervous about what I felt I had to say to her. I’d been mulling it over in my room and finally worked up a head of steam and went downstairs, where I found her folding laundry on the dining table. “Mum*? I don’t… Read more: Forms of Faith (Lent 3)
- Father Figure (Lent 4)Would I have this anxiety about faith if I hadn’t grown up in the family I did? Would I would even think about it? You can’t miss what you never had, I think they say, though the evidence of human history suggests that—in this case—we do. I took a Freud class in graduate school from a professor who declared at the outset that he found religion absurd, an outdated myth that Freud, among… Read more: Father Figure (Lent 4)
- Conversion Tables (Lent 5)I spent the entire day reading and re-reading C. S. Lewis (part of Mere Christianity, all of Surprised by Joy) as a kind of going-to-church activity–rather than muddle around in my own thoughts, I would subject myself to a sermon of sorts. Lewis has been a hero to my family. And he’s been commended to me many times by people concerned for the state of my faith, people who believed he could clear… Read more: Conversion Tables (Lent 5)
- My Saints & Prophets (Lent 6)Marilynne Robinson Faith always sounds like an act of will. Frankly, I don’t know what faith in God means. For me, the experience is much more a sense of God. Nothing could be more miraculous than the fact that we have a consciousness that makes the world intelligible to us and are moved by what is beautiful. Paris Review Fall 2008 If she is a believer, what argument could I possibly raise against… Read more: My Saints & Prophets (Lent 6)
- Vale of Tears (Lent 7)At some point I had to accept that my emotions were not to be trusted—that even the great upwelling of heartache and love that seemed to demand resolution by some dramatic turn toward God was more to be questioned and acceded to.
- “Clear Night”Clear night, thumb-top of moon, a back-lit sky.Moon-fingers lay down their same routineOn the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls. I want to be bruised by God.I want to be strung up in a strong light and picked clean.I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed. And the wind says “What?” to me.And the castor… Read more: “Clear Night”
- Believability (Lent 8)I started 8th grade at a new school—after seven years at public schools in Virginia, I was going to an Episcopal boys’ school 40 minutes from home. The school took boarding students starting in 9th grade, but the middle school was day students only. My class had 8 students. As middle schoolers and day boys we were the school punks, perhaps worse even than the seventh graders who had the advantage of looking… Read more: Believability (Lent 8)
- Credible Threats (Lent 9)It was easier to believe in Satan than in God. We were cautioned against disregarding the devil—his greatest trick, etc., etc.—and I was perhaps over-vigilant about keeping him in mind. Not that I intended to think of him at all. It felt almost like a curse, like he wouldn’t leave me alone. When I opened my eyes at night I expected to find him standing next to my bed. When I walked out… Read more: Credible Threats (Lent 9)
- Among the Faithless (Lent 10)Years ago I went to two conferences on atheism–one in Chicago, one in Washington DC. I thought I might write an essay about the state of atheism in the country, or find out something interesting about the varieties of atheism, or who knows what. The first, in Chicago, happened to be held on Easter weekend, in what was either a juicy bit of irony or a heavy-handed bit of scheduling symbolism. It took… Read more: Among the Faithless (Lent 10)