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My father died when I was seventeen, my last year in high school. That Christmas I had a date with a sophisticated young man—or so I thought.

He said that death was death and that was that. That we are our cerebral cortex. We think through it. When it's gone, we're gone. My outrage brought me an analogy. I'm extremely myopic. If I take off my glasses, there are no stars in the sky at night and all faces become vague little pink blurs. I said to him, "I can't even see you without my glasses. Are they doing the seeing? No. I am. I'm seeing through them. My brain isn't doing the thinking, I am. I'm thinking through it." That's analogy. Now, an analogy is never a provable fact. An analogy is something that opens the door or the window and gives us a glimpse of the truth that gives meaning to lives.

Then, what about doctrine and theology?

I think that right doctrine is far more often taught in stories than in direct dogma. At least it works better for me that way. I'd like to go back a minute to something you asked about atheism. One of my sons-in-law is an English Anglican theologian priest. He has talked about being atheists for Christ's sake. He means that Christians build up little gods, little temples of Baal. We begin to worship them. And we must tear them down, destroy them. The gods we erect are easier to worship than the Creator of the universe. They're more comprehensible. The God I believe in is not comprehensible in finite, mortal terms. God is infinite, immortal, all-knowing. I have a point of view, you have a point of view. God has a point of view. But we don't like having to depend on that which we cannot control, manipulate, dominate.

In a sense, praying and writing involve the same disciplines. When I sit down with an act of will, either before the typewriter or to pray, I have to let go of my control and listen. I listen to the story or I try to get beyond the words of prayer and listen to God. Ultimately when I hear, that is the gift, not my act of will, not my act of virtue. It is pure gift. I guess my favorite analogy for the difference between faith and works came from Rudolph Serkin. My husband and I heard him play Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata better than Beethoven could play it. When the last note faded away there wasn't a sound. Then, slowly, like the ocean waves, the applause swelled. Later I realized that we had been present at a moment of transcendence, of transfiguration. What did Serkin have to do with that? He practices eight hours a day every day. I have to write every day whether I want to or not. I have to pray every day whether I want to or not. It's not a matter of feeling like it, or waiting when I feel inspired, because both in work and in prayer, inspiration comes during rather than before.

Are you saying that emotions don't count, or that they only count after the fact?

That's partly what I mean. When we work either with our intellects or with our emotions, that's fragmented. When we're really working well, we work with intuition and intellect together, with heart and with mind. This fragmentation is old. Paul talked about it in Romans. When mind and heart, or intellect and intuition, work together, it's a gift. To sit down to work—whatever it may be—is an act of free will. But then you have to let go.

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September (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51