From an interview with acclaimed memoirist Mary Karr:
I wonder if finding your faith helped your writing. You say in Lit, when you're cautiously becoming Catholic, "It isn't the ritual of the high Mass that impresses me. But the people--their collective surrender. If I can't do reverence to that, how dead are my innards?" Does that acceptance of surrender help with your confidence? Your voice is so self-critical. You don't even give yourself credit for a good suicide attempt. You were like, lamest suicide attempt ever!Well, the shrinks make a big deal out of it--it was a suicidal gesture, that's what they call it. I didn't actually put my hands on myself, so I'm a fuck-up. We know that. But yes, [my faith is] unbelievably helpful. And maybe it's no different than people doing the Power of Now or whatever. I think the Holy Spirit takes a lot of forms.
I really do write based on prayer. You could see that as talking to your most sane self or your sober self. Somebody said to me, "So, you think you've had all this success because God likes you better than other writers?" And I said, "Absolutely!" Because of my faith, I do have a sense that I'm supposed to be alive on the planet. Which, given the way I was brought up, I didn't exactly have going in.
Does that make sense? Talking about spiritual matters to a secular audience is like doing card tricks on the radio. It's like, "This is really cool, everybody," and they're like, "Yeah, OK!" So I know that it sounds a little nutty.
I don't it sounds that nutty, and I'm definitely part of the secular audience. I read you and Anne Lamott, and you're both people who never thought they would be spiritual but have become spiritual, and the way you write about spirituality is very comforting. It is self-acceptance, ultimately, so I think done well enough it can be relatable.
It's really just about not wanting to kill people on the subway. It's also about not wanting to kill myself when I get home for wanting to kill people on the subway.
I talk about the difference between happiness and joy. I can honestly say I was depressed for so much of my life that I think I knew how to be excited or enthusiastic, but I certainly didn't know anything about joy. Just that simple [feeling], when you run into the ocean.
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I didn't understand the headline for a minute, until I remembered that it is impossible for liberals to be spiritual. Now I get it!! "Catholic" indeed…
Ah, "CONVERSION" not "Conservatism" as I first read. How positively pavlovian of me.
you're both people who never thought they would be spiritual but have become spiritual
The interviewer's use of "spiritual" is what jumped out at me. Heaven forbid that a secular interviewer would actually come out and say, approvingly, that someone is religious.
I guess I disagree with what form of Christianity this woman is touting. I don't think Christianity can be compared to the "power of now or whatever." And I don't think that the Holy Spirit takes many forms. Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father or from the Son, but those are the only forms that the Holy Spirit takes in Christianity as far as I am aware.
Ali,
Perhaps she means that sometimes the Holy Spirit takes the form of a still, small voice; sometimes a whisper, sometimes tongues of fire, and sometimes a shove off a horse.
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