"Makes you wonder about God. And that is a rare moment, indeed, in modern fiction."

—USA Today

A conversation with Jodi about Keeping Faith

One day, when my oldest son was five, we were playing on the driveway. I watched him bike up and down a gradual hill, circling back to me. Those were the days when Kyle was full of questions – where do school buses sleep at night? Do dogs dream? How does a radio work? -- and that afternoon was no different. “Mommy,” Kyle said, coming up to me on his bicycle, “What’s God?”

That was a loaded question. Like many people of my generation, faith was a tricky road for me. I had dozens of friends who had gone to church as children…but now, as adults, didn’t. They wanted their kids to have some sort of religious cornerstone…but felt hypocritical attending for the sake of the kids, when they weren’t sure they wanted to go themselves. For me, the situation was even murkier. I had been raised by a non-practicing Jewish family; I married a WASP who could trace his roots to the Mayflower. We didn’t go to church or temple. We’d decided that when our children started asking questions, we’d tell them both of our answers…in the hopes that one day they could make the decision to believe whatever they wished.

I turned to Kyle and tried to come up with the most secular explanation for God that I could summon. “Well,” I told him. “God lives up in Heaven, and He watches over all of us, to make sure that we’re okay.”

He thought about this for a second. “Kind of like a babysitter?” he asked.

“Exactly.”

Kyle frowned. “But all of my babysitters,” he said, “are girls.”

It was a curious distinction …but a really intriguing one. In spite of the nurturing aspect that is often attributed to God, there seemed to be very little connection between femininity and divinity.  I started to mull over this – and came up with the story of Faith White – a little girl who may or may not be seeing God…but who definitely envisions her special friend as female.

Let me tell you, it’s not an easy thing to write about God. In the first place, I certainly don’t have all the answers. In the second, you are bound to offend someone. I decided that if I was going to go about this religiously, as it were, I was going to have to interview chaplains of all faiths. I met first with an Episcopal priest who recounted being a child, and hearing evangelical ministers come to preach under tents on the plains. Then I sat down with a wonderful elderly priest, who had a curiosity and a sense of humor that I still remember fondly. When I asked him why Catholics were the only ones who saw the Virgin Mary in subway puddles, he grinned and said that’s a terrific question. When I asked about Jews not going to Heaven because they didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, he told me they were “grandfathered” in because Christianity was grafted onto the tree of Judaism.

My final interview was with a rabbi affiliated with a local college. It was the only time in fifteen years of research that I’ve ever been tossed out of anyone’s office. He looked at me and said, “If you’re going to write this book, you better go to rabbinical school…or you’re going to perpetuate mistruths that have dogged Judaism for 5000 years!” He wound up getting fired a week later by the college…so I think he was just having a bad run of luck. However, I needed to find myself a spokesperson for the Jewish religion – and I had the excellent fortune to meet up with a woman who had grown up Catholic, converted to Judaism, and become a rabbi. She also was a lesbian. Here’s someone who’s got to be open-minded, I thought – and she was.  In fact, some of my favorite facts in Keeping Faith came straight from her, as she showed me examples from the Talmud where God has a feminine slant.

When I wrote Keeping Faith, I wanted to look not at religion…but at belief. At how we can be spiritual without being religious. It is awfully hard to talk about religion without drawing a line in the sand…classifying “us” and “them” based on beliefs – but that’s exactly why I thought this book was so important. What if what you believed wasn’t as important as that you believed? What if we were all able to entertain someone else’s point of view about God? I like to believe this world would be a better, safer, more tolerant place.

I still don’t have all the answers about God – I don’t think any of us will, until it’s too late for us to be able to share them. However, I do think that it’s important to bring up the discussion and to remember that it’s just that – a discussion, and not a lecture. To this end, I’m hoping to return to this subject matter for my 2008 book – which will examine, in part, whether Messiahs are born or made.