description: ìutterly consumed with dread.î) I was trying to convince myself that my feelings were customary, despite all evidence to the contraryósuch as the acquaintance IÃd run into last week whoÃd just discovered that she was pregnant for the first time, after spending two years and a kingÃs ransom in fertility treatments. She was ecstatic. She had wanted to be a mother forever, she told me. She admitted sheÃd been secretly buying baby clothes for years and hiding them under the bed, where her husband wouldnÃt find them. I saw the joy in her face and I recognized it. This was the exact joy my own face had radiated last spring, the day I discovered that the magazine I worked for was going to send me on assignment to New Zealand, to write an article about the search for giant squid. And I thought, ìUntil I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby.î I donÃt want to be married anymore.
In daylight hours, I refused that thought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? WeÃd only just bought this house a year ago. HadnÃt I wanted this nice house? HadnÃt I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? WasnÃt I proud of all weÃd accumulatedóthe prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this lifeóso why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to- be mother, andósomewhere in my stolen momentsóa writer ...?
I donÃt want to be married anymore.
My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed. I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldnÃt wake him to share in my distressówhat would be the point? HeÃd already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him. We both knew there was something wrong with me, and heÃd been losing patience with it. WeÃd been fighting and crying, and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees.
The many reasons I didnÃt want to be this manÃs wife anymore are too personal and too sad to share here. Much of it had to do with my problems, but a good portion of our troubles were related to his issues, as well. ThatÃs only natural; there are always two figures in a marriage, after allótwo votes, two opinions, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations. But I donÃt think itÃs appropriate for me to discuss his issues in my book. Nor would I ask anyone to believe that I am capable of reporting an unbiased version of our story, and therefore the chronicle of our marriageÃs failure will remain untold here. I also will not discuss here all the reasons why I did still want to be his wife, or all his wonderfulness, or why I loved him and why I had married him and why I was unable to imagine life without him. I wonÃt open any of that. Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and my albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didnÃt want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.
This part of my story is not a happy one, I know. But I share it here because something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my lifeóalmost like one of those crazy astronomical super-events when a planet flips over in outer space for no reason whatsoever, and its molten core shifts, relocating its poles and altering its shape radically, such that the whole mass of the planet suddenly becomes oblong instead of spherical. Something like that.
What happened was that I started to pray.
You knowólike, to God.
3 Now, this was a first for me. And since this is the first time I have introduced that loaded wordóGODóinto my book, and since this is a word which will appear many times again throughout these pages, it seems only fair that I pause here for a moment to explain exactly what I mean when I say that word, just so people can decide right away how offended they need to get.
Saving for later the argument about whether God exists at all (noóhereÃs a better idea: letÃs skip that argument completely), let me first explain why I use the word God, when I could just as easily use the words Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu or Zeus. Alternatively, I could call God ìThat,î which is how the ancient Sanskrit scriptures say it, and which I think comes close to the all-inclusive and unspeakable entity I have sometimes experienced. But that ìThatî feels impersonal to meóa thing, not a beingóand I myself cannot pray to a That. I need a proper name, in order to fully sense a personal attendance. For this same reason, when I pray, I do not address my prayers to The Universe, The Great Void, The Force, The Supreme Self, The Whole, The Creator, The Light, The Higher Power, or even the most poetic manifestation of GodÃs name, taken, I believe, from the Gnostic gospels: ìThe Shadow of the Turning.î
I have nothing against any of these terms. I feel they are all equal because they are all equally adequate and inadequate descriptions of the indescribable. But we each do need a functional name for this indescribability, and ìGodî is the name that feels the most warm to me, so thatÃs what I use. I should also confess that I generally refer to God as ìHim,î which doesnÃt bother me because, to my mind, itÃs just a convenient personalizing pronoun, not a precise anatomical description or a cause for revolution. Of course, I donÃt mind if people call God ìHer,î and I understand the urge to do so. Againóto me, these are both equal terms, equally adequate and inadequate. Though I do think the capitalization of either pronoun is a nice touch, a small politeness in the presence of the divine.
Culturally, though not theologically, IÃm a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo- Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I canÃt swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian. Most of the Christians I know accept my feelings on this with grace and open-mindedness. Then again, most of the Christians I know donÃt speak very strictly. To those who do speak (and think) strictly, all I can do here is offer my regrets for any hurt feelings and now excuse myself from their business.
Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeedó much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. In every religious tradition on earth, there have always been mystical saints and transcendents who report exactly this experience. Unfortunately many of them have ended up arrested and killed. Still, I think very highly of them.
In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. ItÃs like thisóI used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, ìWhat kind of dog is that?î I would always give the same answer: ìSheÃs a brown dog.î Similarly, when the question is raised, ìWhat kind of God do you believe in?î my answer is easy: ìI believe in a magnificent God.î
4 Of course, IÃve had a lot of time to formulate my opinions about divinity since that night on the bathroom floor when I spoke to God directly for the first time. In the middle of that dark November crisis, though, I was not interested in formulating my views on theology. I was interested only in saving my life. I had finally noticed that I seemed to have reached a state of hopeless and life-threatening despair, and it occurred to me that sometimes people in this state will approach God for help. I think IÃd read that in a book somewhere.
What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: ìHello, God. How are you? IÃm Liz. ItÃs nice to meet you.î
ThatÃs rightóI was speaking to the creator of the universe as though weÃd just been introduced at a cocktail party. But we work with what we know in this life, and these are the words I always use at the beginning of a relationship. In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, ìIÃve always been a big fan of your work ...î
ìIÃm sorry to bother you so late at night,î I continued. ìBut IÃm in serious trouble. And IÃm sorry I havenÃt ever spoken directly to you before, but I do hope I have always expressed ample gratitude for all the blessings that youÃve given me in my life.î
This thought caused me to sob even harder. God waited me out. I pulled myself together enough to go on: ìI am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of h...
