This is not the place for me to explain why I feel spirituality and religion are important. but rather to consider how they infused my vision as I drafted and revised my novels.
Church was important to my family when I grew up. We were Evangelical United Brethren, a mainstream Protestant denomination that had originated as two Wesleyan bodies of German-speaking Americans. It claims roots back to 1767, before its official organization in 1800. Until I took up genealogy, I had no idea that some of my grandmother’s roots reach back to its founding. During my childhood, though, I knew none of that, only that were somehow different. It was the center of our social connections, including the Boy Scout troop that was so crucial in my development. And it’s where the United Methodist Church got the “United” after a big merger when I moved on.
During my senior year of high school, I secretly broke with that, rejecting the culture as well as the faith. After five years of floating through degrees of agnosticism and positive-logic philosophy, I found myself practicing yoga and that, in turn, would open me to Quakers (the Society of Friends) for its weekly group meditation.
By the time my big-writing sabbatical got underway, I was deeply immersed in Quaker faith and public ministry and also fellowshipping with Mennonites and Brethren, all in the historic peace churches stream. In addition, one girlfriend introduced me to the evening services of a Pentecostal megachurch, which at first intrigued but ultimately appalled me, though I did gain some fluency in its ways.
And then, moving to New Hampshire, my Quaker activity intensified. At some point after my remarriage and relocation to Dover, where our meetinghouse was, I also got to know the Greek Orthodox community and its strand of Christianity. As a member of the local religious leaders’ monthly gathering and a Sanctuary alliance, I came to a broader understanding of the different bodies of faith in the surrounding society.
For me, then, when I’m addressing religion, I’m not so much interested in theoretical arguments but rather personal experiences and the ways that discipline strengthens them or even harms over time.
While I’ve come to embrace a radical Christianity, I diverge from many of the commonly accepted doctrines while also valuing Jewish, Buddhist, and Native American teachings. In addition, I’m imbued with the Quaker emphasis of faith being how we live rather than what we say we believe.
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In my fiction, religion and spirituality are central elements. In the four hippie-era novels built around Kenzie, they appear as Tibetan Buddhism. When I drafted What’s Left, I finally had enough firsthand observation of Greek-American tradition to enlarge on the concluding flash of inspiration from my subway novel.
In Hometown News, my attitude toward religion was essentially negative. The congregations are ultimately insular and self-serving rivals. I’d say it’s my most secular novel, and the most dystopian.
Yoga Bootcamp is obviously about religion and spirituality, which then continues in Nearly Canaan with Jaya in her moves to the Midwest, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest. Her practice of what I call the DLQ is the embodiment of her faith.
And the Secret Side of Jaya throws in early Bible translator John Wycliffe, a slew of rural Baptists, and Native lore’s Kokopelli.
For me, designating a religious identity clarifies a character’s underpinnings. Sometimes an ethnic outlook, as well.
In my round of big revisions to my previously published fiction, I had fresh insights to weave into Kenzie’s upbringing in Daffodil Uprising, Subway Visions, and What’s Left. His daughter, Cassia, has her own struggles of blending her parents’ Tibetan Buddhism and Greek Orthodox faith together as well as her being subjected to her classmates’ taunting. I also had fresh insights from a friend who was on her way to being ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun.
Jaya’s encounters with her husband’s family’s Pentecostal church were significantly expanded in my revisions for What’s Left. Pastor Bob emerges as a more complex figure, and his wife becomes one of my favorites, especially as she and Jaya become close friends.
Later, we have Beulah Miller in the Secret Side of Jaya. I’m really fond of her and her Baptist faith-infused ways. Not that all Baptists would agree with her.
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In my writing, I lean toward the positive side of most people. I idealize. I avoid violence. Hope reigns eternal. People are honest, or at least try to be. I doubt that I could craft a truly evil person or even a skilled liar. My sense of social community revolves around the remarkable people I’ve met in religious circles where I’ve been active. It’s definitely not an army unit or casino or auto dealership. It does shape the adage of writing about what I know. And it does limit my range of perception, even as fiction.
Still, in my latest revisions, I’ve attempted to admit some of the darker undercurrents.
I am wondering, too, how Robert Alter’s descriptions of Biblical poetry, narrative, and translations would apply to my own efforts.
Jnana's Red Barn 