Feature

Tables were set for the third annual interfaith Passover Seder meal, a "bring your own wine" event at University Congregational Church in Seattle. There were place settings for 300, fresh flowers, two kinds of charoset (a blend of fruit and nuts), two kinds of horseradish and baskets of matzo. The participants at this event came not only from University Congregational, led by pastor Don McKenzie, but also from Bet Alef, a “meditative synagogue” led by Rabbi Ted Falcon, and from an experimental congregation known as the Interfaith Community Church, led by Sufi Muslim teacher Jamal Rahman.

Do you see your writing and ministry as connected?For me, my writing and my ministry are joined, and I think they are joined for many of my readers, who are looking for some kind of spiritual nourishment as well as entertainment. Usually they've had some kind of religion in the past, at least enough background to know what is going on. They get the fact that Atticus is the story of the prodigal son.To entertain and to educate are the dual functions of any writer. I want people to notice God’s actions in their lives and in the lives of others and to have sympathy for other people. I want them to see that there is something going on here that matters. You can’t do that by hitting people over the head; you have to slowly draw them into it.In a sense, I am trying to proselytize by means of entertaining fiction. Fiction is ideally suited for this because it involves people in other worlds. It lets them see that world through a character’s eyes. Then they find themselves making judgments about whether a character is acting properly or improperly.Fiction, by its nature, asks ethical questions. As you are reading, you are constantly asking whether a character has done what you would have done or if the character has gone awry in some way. When you are reading, whether you are aware of it or not, you are offering advice to the character, and thus offering advice to yourself.

Seventeen-year-old Liam Q. joined the U.S. Navy to see the world. His test scores marked him for further training in a technical specialty, but Liam wanted to steer an aircraft carrier, so the navy made him a helmsman. As every sailor knows, shore leave is the most dangerous part of any cruise, and this turned out to be true for Liam. He fell in love with an older woman and was convicted of shooting her husband. In 1983, at the age of 19, he embarked on a different kind of cruise: a life sentence “up the river.”

On the southern shore of Lake Superior, rugged edges of deep green forest merge with cliffs of sandstone and million-year-old granite to mark a remote corner of the Upper Peninsula that economists often call America’s “second Appalachia.” For those who live here, it has become a battleground between an international mining company and a patchwork coalition of residents, fisherfolk, church leaders, environmentalists and an Indian tribe.

One of the teenagers killed in Colorado’s Columbine High School shootings in 1999 was Cassie Bernall. Soon after her murder, reports emerged about how one of the shooters had found Bernall under a table, pointed a gun at her head and asked, “Do you believe in God?” She said yes and was promptly shot.Within weeks of that event I heard a sermon at an Episcopal church praising Bernall’s witness and urging Christians to imitate her faithfulness. Prognosticators predicted another Great Awakening in American life sparked by Bernall’s martyrdom.

Responding effectively to criticism in ministry has been one of my growing edges for many years. On a good day, when I'm well rested, spiritually grounded and in touch with my inner warrior woman, and the planets are properly aligned, I handle criticism just fine. But on my bad days, I’m pretty lousy about staying in my own skin when someone comes at me with a criticism, especially about my preaching.

A few decades ago Qatar was a tribal society with an economy based largely on fishing, pearl harvesting and camel and horse breeding. In 1995 a bloodless coup set the stage for the modernization of the country’s oil and gas industries. Qatar’s economy grew 24 percent in 2006 alone, and its per capita income that year was $61,540. Today Qatar is on track to become the wealthiest nation (on a per capita basis) in the world.

On July 4, 1976, bicentennial fever swept through the U.S., and I caught an especially acute case. Soldiers from George Washington’s army occupied my bedspread. The seal of the Continental Congress dignified my bedroom rug. On the Fourth I put on a tricorner hat, rolled up my jeans to turn them into knee breeches, donned my mom’s ruffled blouse and grabbed my musket so that I could march with a hundred other suburbanites in a neighborhood parade.

In fifth grade my Little League baseball team lost its first five games. Our coach quit. We got a new coach, a 16-year-old named Don Crosby. Don was a great player and should have been on the high school team, but he hadn’t passed enough classes to be eligible. Today he’d probably be diagnosed as having a learning disability, but back then he was just plain out of luck. Don was only four or five years older than we were, but he easily established his authority with us. He made us run lots of laps around the swing set at the far end of the school yard. He told us we were not to talk when he was talking, and when we answered him, we were to say “Yes sir” and “No sir.”