CONVERSION NARRATIVES

Just because I think this is a great song by a great band that always manages to use the three minutes they have in a song to capture all the feelings I have about religion, love, and hopelessness. Tall order, short song. Feel free to listen to "Hot Soft Light" here as well.

Lately I have been super fascinated with conversion narratives. In my last post, I mentioned that I was reading "The Archivist," a book about the religious conversions of its protagonists, as well as the religious and mental transformations of T.S. Eliot and his wife and extra-curricular lover. Several of my friends have made that giant leap of faith lately -- from non-religious to religious, from unemployment to employment, being single to being in relationships. These are topics I can only peripherally begin to comprehend, but I'm so intrigued. My friend D analogized that moment when someone accepts Christ as the Savior to being hit by a big yellow bus. My guess is that it's not a subtle moment. Incidentally, another good friend has also been working toward her own spiritual journey and as someone who knows both the "before" and "in progress" backstories, it has been an amazing transformation to witness.

One of the issues I had while reading "The Archivist" was its blatant simplification of conversation narratives: Christian versus Judaism, denial versus acceptance, truth versus fantasy; the reality is that these are really complicated issues and author Martha Cooley makes it seem like you can so easily juxtapose these topics when I'm not sure they're even comparable. It's also disheartening reading a novel where every female character is burdened with an emotional and mental breakdown. Similarly, the perspective of a semi-disconnected, but sane, Christian, middle-aged man is difficult to read against the chronicles of abrupt diary entries of a mentally deteriorating, guilt-ridden but passionate Jewish woman. Why must religious attainment also be uncontainable, illogical fervor? Cooley's novel is so offsides (to the point where I began to wonder whether Cooley had ulterior motives) in its representation of Christian and Jewish faith that it became more of an annoyance than a critical aspect of the novel. It's certainly not a qualification that an author's intent be objective regarding ecumenical matters, but I just didn't see the point of these stark contrasts. It didn't pay off, and I didn't leave with any more conviction that a conversion was critical to anyone's mental and physical health, even though Cooley so blatantly argues for it.

These issues of conversion are weighing pretty seriously in my mind, and it's difficult to know how to react and respond. It's always sort of confusing when your friends all begin undergoing these great changes in their lives, and you can't quite relate -- it's difficult on the one hand because that person has transformed, and the relationship must be reframed, but it's also difficult because you also have to wonder why these changes don't seem to necessarily apply to you.

Medium heavy thoughts to usher in 2011. After being in sunny California, visiting and enjoying the company of my best friends, good Chinese food, and daily yoga practice at my favorite studio in the South Bay, flying back to cold, snow-filled Ann Arbor is the last thing I want to do! My only condolence is that spring break is in two months and I may be visiting Claire in NYC.

xoxo, t

P.S. Remember that 90s show "Touched By An Angel"? What if we put that in the active voice, and made us the subject? "I Touched An Angel." Is that... wrong? It seems wrong.