A Winding Road - Returning to Faith
Ok. This is the part where I bear my soul a little.
I was raised Roman Catholic. I left the Church when I was 18 and on my way to college, and it took me over twenty years to get back.
Now, don't get the wrong idea! I have not returned to being the same kind of Catholic I was when I was 17, and a very devout right-wing radio listening Catholic.
“Don't get the wrong idea” … Why would I think to write that? Am I embarrassed? It might seem somewhat odd that I returned to an organization that is largely anti-LGBTQ, doesn't allow women priests, condemns birth control, etc. In principle, on these things I tend to be a bit progressive. I'm not one of "those" Catholics. My stories reflect this, no doubt.
On the other hand, don't get the wrong idea! I have not returned to the Church to hand-wave the things I don't agree with. If only I could be so flippant, it would be emotionally simpler. But it's not. I struggle with Church teaching on the things I don't agree with. I usually tend to be conservative in matters of religious traditions, valuing the disciplines, teachings, and mystical practices of prayer (and the sacraments!) over more unstructured approaches to religion. I'm not one to just lightly toss things aside. I'm not one of "those" Catholics either.
In fact, I'm not really sure what kind of Catholic I am. I used to super devout and serious about my faith, and when I left my faith for an alternative, I took that essence with me. Now, I've come to realize that I struggle with the faith, I'm an imperfect one at best.
God, are you listening? Some help here would be nice. Except not that kind of help.
Ok, now I'm getting in my own way. Can you help me get out of my own way?
When I was 18, I left the Church to explore alternative spirituality, and I practiced some sort neo-paganism for the next 14-ish years. During this time I read as much as I could about world religions, excited to find spirituality outside of what I had been told was the ‘one true way.’ Then, one day I realized I had become skeptical of all of it, and my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I just … walked away. For the next decade, I was just shy of an atheist. I appeared as an atheist to the outside world, and was resistant to any sort of organized religion, but in my inner thoughts, I knew I still felt that belief in … something. It was during this time that I started writing the Ahmbren Chronicles.
Coming back to the Church was not easy. It was among the most difficult things I've done… a lot of internal wrestling, and a four year process of going back to a church, leaving, stopping, reading, coming back, until I ended up talking to a military chaplain to come back into communion.
But even after having come back into communion, I still struggle with aspects of it. I think, ultimately, I'm still in the process of returning, and this is where I've been stuck. And this is why the final book hasn't progressed. I hadn’t lived in this space long enough to be able to write it.
Looking back, I realize that the Ahmbren Chronicles represents a progression of the journey. Although I planned since I was a kid to write the kind of epic fantasy in Myth and Incarnation, I ended up writing it's sequel first: the trilogy When Dragons Die. I wrote this during my skeptical period. It's the fantasy equivalent of an homage to atheism and rational thought. In hindsight, in the context of the larger series, it's really about rejecting false gods and religion.
Then I went back and wrote it's prequel, the book I intended to write first: Myth and Incarnation. It's the mythological story of god-like beings incarnating amongst mortals, and the difference between the truth of things and the myths woven around them. This book could be representative of the synchronistic spirituality of my early adult years.
I wrote these four books in a relatively short period of time, considering their length. I had already gone through those phases of my life, so really what I was doing was playing catch-up in the series. I already knew that part of the journey.
Then I started writing the sequels: The God Who Lived. In the first trilogy, all gods are rejected as false. But, without giving away too much, there is one who might not be quite as false as the others, slipping past the fate of the other gods by being born into mortal life …
So I wrote Through Rose-Colored Goggles and The Clockwork Goddess during the four years that I was living through spiritual unrest. I could no longer ignore the fact that I did (and do) believe in a higher power, some sort of loving God, and coming to terms with what that means. And despite the fact these two books push the boundaries of weird (and I mean, like Frank Herbert Dune weird, the later Dune books we don’t like to talk about weird, with a little bit of everyone groks everyone Heinlein weird), they still reflect my movement back into Christian thought of a single higher power, a God of Love, who wants to be in relationship with us.
I finished The Clockwork Goddess, and had started on the finale around the time that I made an appointment with the priest on base. I won't go into the details of the process here, but suffice it to say I came back into Communion on the feast of Corpus Christi in 2018.
And shortly after, my book progress ground to a halt.
Looking back, I can see now how my books reflected my journey. The first four books came out in the span of 2 or 3 years. That's four decent sized novels in a short span of time… because, as I alluded to, I had already trod those paths and the epic was catching up. Then the next two novels transitioned in a return to an expression of faith… and then everything caught up to where I was but I hadn't lived the experience yet.
And that's the thing. I think I'm still figuring out that that means to live in the faith again. I have a long way to go. I used to think I had it figured out, whether it was the Super Catholic 17 Year Old Me, or the 20-30-year old pagan, or the 30-40 year old skeptic. Now? not so much.
So now that I've been back in the Church again, albeit imperfectly, for the last 6 years… maybe it's time to start writing this book again. I'm giving myself permission to restart it. The prior drafts had the god incarnation character grow more and more distant from the reader once she woke up to realizing she was the divine Child. I had this idea that you never get the POV of Jesus in the Gospels, so I wanted to make her story, once she awakened, told only from eye witnesses.
The problem was, before that, we did have POV scenes with her, and I think this switch had the effect of making her more distant from the reader. So, as great as some artistic ideas can be, this seems to be the wrong effect.
I think I want to focus more on what God means to me, and it's not about the distance, or the religiosity. God wants to be in relationship with us, so I think I need to make this character warm, accessible, and present. And focus the book's spiritual themes on relationships. Which, in truth, would be in harmony with the series as a whole.
Welp. All that brings me to … what is my genre? I know it's epic fantasy. I know it's progressive. I know it explores mature themes (get thee behind me Heinlein). I put on the main page that this is spiritual fantasy, and that feels correct. It may not be religious in the sense that it conforms to a church's doctrine or teaching. In fact, some people of my own faith might find it offensive. But as Aradma would say, I have to be faithful to the truth of my being. These stories are the amalgam of my journey, both inside and outside the Church.
So, in declaring my stories to be spiritual fantasy, I'm giving myself permission in this blog to also talk about spiritual things. Sometimes they won't be strictly about my books… they may be about the faith journey itself, and my experience with pagan, skeptic, and Christian ideas. Because, the reality is my experiences inform my writing, and in writing, the stories and characters inform my experiences.
We'll see where this goes.
Of course, all of this is very well and good, but I have a world to tend.
Until next time…