Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.
I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I’d hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.
It feels like I’m babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet cokes.
But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.
I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and justice.
I went to Goucher College in Maryland for the best possible reasons – to learn – but then I dropped out at 19 for the best possible reasons – to become a writer.
Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one. If they didn’t, they would get a new one.
If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.
I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.
The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.
Just don’t pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don’t. Stay open to them. It’s teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It’s that simple.
There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness.
I feel incredibly successful. I make a living as a writer and am able to help support a big family, my church, my bleeding-heart causes.
I’ve written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don’t really have a genre these days.
I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.
I went to church with my grandparents sometimes and I loved it.
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, “I hate you, God.” That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you’ve had in months.
I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction.
I have a very dark sense of humor. I swear. I have a very playful relationship with Jesus.
I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I’ve seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties.