holiday journey

When Kelly Starling Lyons asked me to write a guest post for The Brown Bookshelf, I figured I would write about Dayshaun’s Gift. But then weeks went by and Let the Faithful Come was published, so I decided to write about that book instead. I was listening to Pandora, as I often do when I’m writing, and “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey came on. Since I was writing about my evolving relationship to religion, I decided that would be a suitable title for the essay. I’m not a PK but I grew up in a large, devout Christian family, and the nativity story still thrills me even though I haven’t seen the inside of a church in quite a while…here’s a bit of what I wrote:

I don’t often talk about religion because it no longer plays such a big role in my life. My mother forced me to attend church every Sunday morning (“So long as you live under my roof…”), and I vowed I would never again go to church once I moved out of her house, which is pretty much how things worked out. Once in a while I accompanied my father to Brooklyn Tabernacle, but the megachurch experience wasn’t for me and mostly I just hoped he would take me to Junior’s for lunch once church let out. I still pray every morning and night, and at funerals can usually remember the hymns I sang as a child. But at 43, I find that many of my friends are atheists or prefer to think of themselves as “spiritual” rather than “religious” (according to the Pew Research Center, nearly a quarter of adults in the US identify as “nones” – a term for people who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, or who say their religion is “nothing in particular”). I do have some friends who identify as Christian but they tend to be radical social justice activists and are nothing like those conservatives who think their time and energy is best spent complaining about the design of a coffee cup.

I hope you’ll take a moment to read the entire essay. We’re almost ready to publish the bilingual English/Spanish edition and I’m hoping this book will be a welcome gift for children who feel less than welcome in this country. If you’d like to support refugee kids, you can donate to REFORMA’s Children in Crisis project here.