7 Girl meets God

Book club meets tonight to share our views and experiences reading "Girl meets God" by Lauren F. Winner (Algonquin Books of chapel Hill, 2002). I'm not sure I know any modern writer who has so carefully chronicled her faith walk--surely she was keeping a diary knowing someday she would tell all.

The author was raised a Reform Jew, converted to Orthodox Judaism in college, and then later converted to Christianity and worships in the Episcopal tradition. She is also bright, well-educated and an avid and eclectic reader. Unlike many Christians who read the Old Testament for signposts to Jesus, she is very familiar with the rabbinic commentaries and centuries of traditions that build on those stories. She is able to see wonderful parallels between Christian and Jewish holy days that the rest of us might miss.

She weaves into her own story, stories of her family and friendships, including some of the men she wanted to marry as a Jew and then as a Christian. She is painfully honest about her sins, particularly those where she might put herself above others who are not as knowledgeable or as educated as she is.

I loved the chapter on Lent (p. 123) where her priest asks her if she plans to give up anything for Lent. Being a new Christian, and somewhat smug, she is prepared to fast one day. But her priest knows her weak areas and suggests she give up reading! She is an idolatrous reader--reading isn't a fallback activity, it is her life. She had 3,000 books in her tiny grad student apartment.

On infant baptism "[a Baptist friend] often says that a baby can't promise to do everything one promises in baptism. I have never found this a very persuasive argument. . . The very point is that no baptismal candidate, even an adult, can promise to do those things all by himself. The community is promising for you, with you, on your behalf. It is for that reason that I love to see a baby baptized. . . we cannot labor under the atomizing illusion that individuals in Christ can or should go this road alone. . . we are struck unavoidably with the fact that this is a community covenent, a community relationship, that these are communal promises." p.80

On Mary's Magnificat "To read Mary's inversion of Naomi's words as a statement that what's empty and incomplete in the Hebrew Scriptures is fulfilled only in the coming of Christ is to miss the meaning of the Book of Ruth. Mary reverses Naomi's lament, but she is not the first to do so. . . The whole point of the Book of Ruth is, in fact, reversing Naomi's lament. . . Mary's proclamation . . reiterates the fulfillment that the Book of Ruth already offers. . .she is repeating a reversal that is already there in the text." p. 251

Her new book, which I haven't read, is Mudhouse Sabbath, written after seven years in the Christian tradition about things that she misses in the spiritual traditions of Judaism.