Tuesday, January 25, 2005
RETURN TO RELIGIOUS CONFUSION
The Village Voice reports on a new book by Minna Proctor titled "Far From Heaven."
The book is about her father's decision later in life to become an Episcopal priest:
When I was a girl, my atheist parents casually asked me if I wanted to attend religious training like most of the other kids in my provincial town. I quickly said no, but never revealed the flaky eight-year-old's logic behind my decision: Hebrew school conflicted with ABC Afterschool Specials. Like me, Minna Proctor always believed that faith was optional. "I formulated the impression that I was meant to choose my religion as an adult," she writes in Do You Hear What I Hear? Her Jewish mother and Catholic father, both academics, had brought her up in a secular way. So when her dad tells her that he wants to become an Episcopal priest, she is flabbergasted, not to mention totally unequipped to understand his decision: "I could say that my father set me on a path to godlessness—and then abandoned me there."
Confusion abounds even among the intellectuals...perhaps especially among the intellectuals? That small voice in the night is so hard to deny.
