It’s 8 a.m. and I’m sitting in a donut shop in Galesburg, IL. The animatronic Santa directly behind me occasionally bursts into a tinny rendition of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” then collapses into blissful silence just when I am about to smack him.

My mom just phoned to wish me a happy birthday. It chokes me up that my birthday is the first thing she remembered when she woke up this morning, because she is very ill in the hospital. Today we are waiting on some important test results that should give us a better picture about how far her cancer has spread, and what the immediate future might hold.

Advent is a time of waiting, but this kind of waiting is the worst of all.

I’m sorry I have not been blogging. Because of Mom’s illness I am taking a break from blogging (and a lot of other things) for the rest of December so I can be with her.

Oh, crap. Now Amy Grant is on the radio here at Spud-Os, singing that it’s the most wonderful time of the year. The hap, happiest season of all.

I love Amy Grant, but I am now wearing my noise-canceling headphones because I really can’t stand one more dose of holiday cheer.

But no matter what the news is today or next week or next month, I do know one truth: God is good. All the time.

There is such a thing as joy that transcends circumstance. There is a love that lives beyond all that we know here, all that we do. And sometimes we are lucky enough to be born to a mother who shows that love.

I hope to be back to writing in January, and I wish you all . . . not a merry Christmas, exactly, but a deep joy no matter what your life feels like right now.

The Christmas image is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

Earlier this week on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart brought up the all-too-predictable "war on Christmas" that creeps into December news stories, as alarmist commentators bemoan the erosion of Christmas as a Christian holy day and whimper aloud about how the separation of church and state prevents them from the good old-fashioned fun to be had occupying their town square with a nativity scene.

"For years now Christmas has been under attack, defended only by the brave souls at Fox News," Stewart quipped, pointing out the absurdity of the now-annual holiday tradition of conservative Christians proclaiming that our godless, secular culture is trying to erase the holiday. Last month, for example, atheists protested when an Arkansas public school had a field trip to a local church to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, complete with Linus's moving rendition of the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

"There's a war on Christmas?" Stewart asked. "Has anyone told Thanksgiving? Cause this year, Black Friday, a.k.a. 'Christmas's opening bell," got moved back a day to Black Thursday -- or as we used to call it, Thanksgiving."

I can understand, to a point, the concern that encroaching consumerism removes Christians' focus from Christ's birth to the many other delightful things about the holiday -- presents, decorations, special foods, and vacation time. But the way for Christians to solve that problem is to deepen their own spiritual understanding of the holiday as a holy day, not to tear their hair out because some secular Americans have rightly protested the requirement that kids in public school sing songs about Jesus' birth.

It's never been constitutional to force religion into the public square (well, at least since the Fourteenth Amendment), and just because more Americans are standing up for their rights in this matter doesn't mean there is a "war on Christmas."

In fact, let's be clear: Christmas has always been a pagan holiday. This came up on my blog last week when a commenter took a very dim view of the celebration's history:

If one does a “google search” on the pagan origins of Christmas (and most other holidays) you would find that “Christmas” has been celebrated for thousands of years and predates Christianity. It was the winter solstice and other pagan beliefs that were “adopted” by the early Catholic church and “sanctified” and renamed and rededicated to (supposedly) honor Christ. Look into it with an open mind and ask yourself if a true Christian can honor God by these things… read 1 Corinthians 10:21-22

Historically, the commenter is correct. Just about every aspect of this holiday has pagan origins. Adam English's new book The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, which traces the development of legends around Nicholas of Myra (now regarded as jolly old St. Nick), demonstrates many of these juxtapositions. When the Roman Empire was sweeping the world during the lifetime of Nicholas of Myra (ca. 260-335), its leaders had to make decisions about how to deal with the many beloved pagan holidays that people celebrated in the regions where Christianity had recently won allegiance. The final dating of Christmas on December 25 (after earlier celebrations on March 25 and January 6) was selected because it could be observed on the winter solstice, consecrating the pagan worship of the sun god for Jesus while not expecting the people to give up the joy of a festival long-held on that date.

So historically, the comment is accurate, but it is theologically misguided. It seems to presuppose that there should be such a thing as a "pure" Christian holiday, when I can't think of a single example of that in Christian history. Easter, for example, placed the resurrection of Christ smack dab on top of the pagan spring fertility festivals of the ancient world, which is why we still traumatize our children to this day with mixed messages about eggs and giant rabbits.

So let's lighten up about Christmas. People who want to celebrate it as the birth of Christ can always do so in church, at home, or wherever they please so long as they're not imposing religion on others in the public square. And people who want to celebrate it as a pagan winter festival with nog and parties and cards ... well, God bless us, every one.

The blog post is part of a Patheos Book Club Roundtable discussion of Adam English's book The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus. You can read other perspectives on the book here, watch an interview with the author here, or read an excerpt here.

The image of Santa is used with permission of Shutterstock.com. Coca-Cola not included.

Spurred by helpful instructions about what authors should have in a website, I wanted a site that was active with fresh content, though the newsletter feature is not yet live. I am so pleased with the results, and wanted to post some photos here to thank Paraclete Multimedia for listening to all of my suggestions and working on multiple revisions to get an author website that is both fun and functional.

My instructions to Paraclete were that I wanted a lot of white space and a clean, contemporary design. I hate clutter, whether it's in my house or on the Internet!

I also wanted a calendar page so I could let readers know about speaking engagements that might be happening in their area.

I asked for a "fun stuff" page so I could post links to things that are on my bookshelf, or blogs that I enjoy. This page is a work in progress, as I'll be updating it as I can. I also still need to activate the newsletter option at the bottom; I am trying to choose between MailChimp and Constant Contact in setting up a quarterly author newsletter.

One thing that struck me when I did a little research about successful author websites was the need for interactivity and regular, fresh content. Author Media had this to say:

A pitfall many authors fall into is that they keep redesigning their websites instead of adding value to them.

When they first get their website, it is the most beautiful site on the web. Like the mother of a newborn, they can’t see the flaws and only see the beauty. After a while, they begin to get tired of the design and start to nitpick. After a couple of years, they hate it and want to start over. They forget that their visitors don’t spend hours looking at their sites like they do. Their visitors don’t notice the subtle “problems” of their site.

Most author websites look just fine. The problem is there is nothing to see.

Think of the design as a picture frame and the content (blog posts, articles, podcasts) as the picture. My recommendation is to spend ten times more time and money creating a good picture (the content) rather than a good frame (the design).

Well put. With this in mind, I had the designers put my twitterfeed right on the front page, positioned fairly prominently so that readers could see the latest chapter of the Twible. In the spring, when I've finished tweeting the entire Bible, I'll go back and revise the project, tweeting several new chapters a day as I go. All that will appear automatically on the front page of the site.

Overall, I'm thrilled with my website and its subpages. Since it's on a WordPress platform, I will be able to make updates and changes myself when I need to, rather than having to pay a monthly maintenance fee and go through a third party.

Authors who are looking for great website design should consider Paraclete Multimedia. They've also done sites for Phyllis Tickle, Luci Shaw, the Redbud Writers Guild, Walt Wangerin, and many others.

Here's the lowdown on costs: I paid about $2100 for my site, including all the subpages and multiple revisions so Paraclete could get it exactly how I wanted. That price included a 15% discount since I am an author with Paraclete Press. I had done some looking around, and while it's not the cheapest rate going, it was not at all unreasonable for the kind of service I got. (During the revision process, they were always waiting on me to give feedback; I never had to wait for them to get back to me.)

I hope you enjoy the site. Check back for future updates.

As Advent begins and a cease-fire is brokered in Gaza, guest blogger Ruth Everhart, author of Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land, has Bethlehem on the brain. Our gauzy Christmas carols don't do justice to the realities of ongoing conflict in holy places. As she writes, "The next time you’re shopping and hear a song about Bethlehem, would you pray for them [the people there]?" --JKR

"Bethlehem on the Brain"

by Ruth Everhart

Maybe it’s because we waited breathlessly all last week as Egypt brokered a ceasefire in Gaza.

Maybe it’s because we officially turn the calendar from Thanksgiving to Advent this week.

More likely it’s because I heard “O Little Town of Bethlehem” as I shopped for sweat socks the other day at Kohls.

For whatever reason, I have Bethlehem on the brain.

Jesus’ birthplace is a tiny town in a complicated land, but ever since I visited there as a pilgrim, I feel a special pull toward Bethlehem:

O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Bethlehem is only five miles from Jerusalem, but the trip is significant. A traveler or pilgrim must pass into the West Bank through a checkpoint at the “Wall of Separation,” the barrier that separates Israel from Occupied Palestine. At this spot, poised between suburban Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Wall stretches some 26 feet high. The cement barrier casts a long shadow: politically, economically, religiously.

As our tour bus rattled noisily down the streets of Bethlehem, they seemed dark, even in daytime. Despair tinged the air. The windows of businesses were covered with plywood and metal bars. Unemployed men stood on street corners.

We arrived at the “shepherd’s field” and walked down the rocky, sloping pasture, admiring the view of Jerusalem in the distance. We turned into a tuck of the hill and descended stone steps into a cave, trailing our fingers on the cold stone walls as pilgrims before us had done. And then, like those other pilgrims, we gathered to pray, surrounded by that cold but generative rock, rock that once saw the birth of our Lord.

Next we boarded the noisy tour bus to ride up the hill to the Church of the Nativity. A guide explained the conflict-ridden history of this famous place. We lit candles in the shrine built over the spot where the “original” Jesus manger once stood. We toured both naves of this twinned church. In one nave the Eucharist was held aloft, with people chanting; in the other a casket stood open, with people singing. I knelt to pray in each, feeling the presence of the Spirit.

Then the bus took us deeper into Palestine, to a refugee camp called Deheshieh (duh-HAY-shuh). We were introduced to our guide, who was named Jihad Ramadan. He was young and dark-haired and full of passion. Do you recoil against his name? I did, at first. But I listened to him. I let him interpret the reality my eyes took in: crumbling concrete walls, cramped alleyways, children in tattered clothing. My heart went out to the generations who have been born and raised in this “camp” which is anything but temporary.

Now the tour bus is a distant memory. But when I returned home, the sights and sounds of my pilgrimage entered my sermons. My congregation and I began to realize how many things had shifted for me. Over time, I was compelled to write a book about the pilgrimage experience.

I’m a pilgrim still. And every Advent, I have Bethlehem on the brain.

As Advent begins, my prayer is that Christians everywhere may open their eyes and ears to hear the plight of our Palestinian neighbors, whether Muslim, Christian or atheist. These people have no nationality and no rights.

The next time you’re shopping and hear a song about Bethlehem, would you pray for them?

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

________________________________________

Book: Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land
Blog: Work in Progress
Facebook: RuthHEverhart
Twitter: @rutheverhart

1) Discovering Advent: How to Experience the Power of Waiting on God at Christmastime. At $2.99, this is a bargain for those who have a Kindle and don't need the bells & whistles of glossy pages and ribbon markers in their devotionals. Author Mark Roberts, the director of Laity Lodge, speaks from his personal experience as an evangelical who has come to understand that practices like having an Advent wreath and candles actually help to increase the spirituality of the season. (To that end, one of the coolest aspect of the book is that he briefly outlines what all the candles in the Advent wreath symbolize.)

2) God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas. These daily devotions from Dietrich Bonhoeffer guide readers through all the weeks of Lent, from waiting and mystery to redemption, incarnations, and joy. The hardcover is $9.92 on Amazon (though The Thoughtful Christian is running a special on it for $7.20 right now), and the Kindle version is -- get this -- $6.66. I'm sure Bonhoeffer would find that amusing. I edited this compilation from a number of Bonhoeffer's letters, sermons, and books, and it was a pleasure to work on. A companion devotional of Bonhoeffer's thoughts for Lent and Easter was just released too.

3) Daily Feast: Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year C. Since I'm tooting my horn already, here's another project I helped with. Cost: Amazon is offering this nice gift edition (soft & Bible-like faux leather cover, ribbon marker, great layout) for $16.50, but you can get it even cheaper ($11.25) at The Thoughtful Christian. This book is perfect if you're an Episcopalian, Lutheran, or Presbyterian who uses the lectionary. It takes some of the best snippets from the monumental Feasting on the Word series and puts them in day-today devotional format, beginning with the start of the Church this weekend and continuing for a full year. The format works a week ahead so that through that week of Advent (or whatever other seasons), you're learning about and reflecting on the coming Sunday's lectionary readings. I'll be giving copies of this book to my friends who are priests and pastors this year.

4) Celebrating the Light: Reflections for the Sundays of Advent. I haven't read this one yet, but I bought it for the Kindle because a) it's by Julie Goss Clawson, who wrote the excellent book The Hunger Games and the Gospel, and b) it was only $1.99. My inner midwestern child loves a bargain. The book description says: "Celebrating the Light includes five separate meditative themes for the season of Advent. Some of them follow traditional themes for each Sunday of Advent, others focus of lesser known traditions or creative approaches. They are offered for use in private and corporate worship settings in hope that they will bless readers as they actively wait in hopeful anticipation for the Advent of our Lord."

5) Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. This book is, hands down, my favorite Advent devotional, the one I return to year after year. Featuring excerpts from Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Annie Dillard, Dorothy Day, Madeleine L'Engle, John Donne, and even Sylvai Plath, it takes a decidely literary approach to the holiday season. (Today's selection, for example, is from Kathleen Norris on Annunciation. You really can't beat that.) Available at Amazon for just under $10.

The image of Christmas candles is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

Hey, you! Mormon woman with the minivan. Does visiting teaching bog you down with miles of guilt? Do you pretend to have a fussy toddler when it's time for the annual visiting teaching conference, just so you can stay in the hall? When If you read the Ensign's monthly visiting teaching message to your assigned sister, do you feel like you're not measuring up and hope like hell you don't make her feel that way, too?

I've said before that visiting teaching is my favorite part of Relief Society, but that's because I've always looked at it as a fun and flexible excuse for friendship, not a religious obligation. I have not read the monthly message to a sister in many years, though I sometimes glance at the topic beforehand and try to think about how or whether a conversation on that topic will bless her life.

(By the way, this month's is "Visiting Teaching: A Work of Salvation." No pressure or guilt there at all.)

My first-ever visiting teacher used to take me out to lunch and we got to know each other over long conversations over breadsticks at the Olive Garden. (This was the 90s, and the Olive Garden was still cool, so stop your disdainful sniffing.) My second visiting teacher taught me how to make strawberry jam.

What I learned from them, and what I have tried to carry forward as a teacher myself, is that visiting teaching is endlessly adaptable and has the potential for wonderful fun. It forces women to take time to get to know each other as people -- good old-fashioned Mormony people who get all up in one another's business and pray for each other.

This is the kind of visiting teaching I love, and I have found a book that celebrates it exactly: Chocolate Chips and Charity: Visiting Teaching in the Real World by Linda Hoffman Kimball. I'm giving it to three different people for Christmas this year -- my own awesome teacher and the two equally awesome women I get to teach. (Um, if you're reading this, try to act surprised.)

As the subtitle suggests, these are not platitudes or idealized messages that make everyone feel worse about themselves, but on-the-ground personal stories about how various women's lives have been helped by visiting teaching. There are a couple of miracles, sure, but for the most part they are miracles of casseroles: service given, love expressed, cookies made, and laundry done.

Some stories will make you laugh, and some will move you to tears.

But none of them will make you feel guilty.

The guilty image is used with permission of Shutterstock.com. Because I carry enough guilt around as it is, thanks, without having to worry about the illegal use of images.

I'm not sure if you've heard, but yesterday was "Giving Tuesday," an attempt to stem the tide of consumerism that has come to plague Thanksgiving weekend.

I can understand the desire to fight back, since it's no longer just a matter of Black Friday, but a whole Passion play of special shopping days: we now shop on Thanksgiving Thursday itself (!), then continue the parade on Black Friday, "Buy Local" Saturday, and Cyber Monday.

On Tuesday, we rested . . . by giving to others. Or did we?

It's that time of year when my magazine basket begins to fill up with seasonal catalogs, and when Lands End has anxiety attacks if two days go by without my receiving yet another sleek encouragement to shop at their site. I expect that.

But over the last few years, I've also noticed a distinct uptick in the number of "charity catalogs" I receive. I used to get one from the Heifer Project, but now they also come from Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, and Operation Smile. I'm sure there are others.

These catalogs are appealing because they're so dang concrete. You're not donating $50 to be used however the organization sees fit, which for all you know could fund its annual holiday party for office staff or this very catalog you're holding in your hands. Instead your fifty bucks will buy a section of llama for that adorable little kid right there in the photo.

Giving like this doesn't feel anonymous.

On the one hand I think the catalogs serve some important purposes. They put a human face on poverty, educate comfortable Westerners about basic needs elsewhere in the world, and concretize those needs by breaking them down into action items, one family and one llama at a time. The catalogs are a terrific way to teach kids about the value of giving; I've used them with my own daughter as she decides what to do with her tithing money. You can also cut down on consumerism by making your donation/purchase in a loved one's name or memory.

On the other hand, they are more about buying stuff than they are about giving. Am I really giving to charity via these glossy catalogs of chickens and goats, or am I just satisfying an insatiable need to shop? Or am I feeding my desire be in control of what happens to my hard-earned money?

Whatever the case, I gave. I bought a basket of rabbits last night to honor a friend who has blessed my life with her kindness and generosity. Just as her friendship has multiplied abundantly, so too may these rabbits . . . . So why do I feel guilty?

Last week in this five-part series, we looked at two things that authors should never say in a query letter: “God told me to write this book” and “I’m happy to do interviews.”

Here’s another: Don’t ever tell an editor or agent that your book is ready for publication, implying that it is perfect and does not require editing.
To illustrate what this might look like, here’s a portion of an actual query letter I received in late 2009. I’ve removed any specific information about the author and his project:

The attached manuscript submission is in its final draft, ready for publication. I intend to publish the book in March 2010 under my own imprint, but I wish to share this with you to see if it catches your eye. While I am prepared to self-publish, I remain open to graceful possibilities.

Contrary to my last email, I have decided not to send a proposal. A few moments with the manuscript should be enough to sell an editor with eyes to see. . . .

I know this is a bold request on my part, but this book is like a baby that needs to be born and I am looking for a stable.

There are so many things wrong with this query letter it’s difficult to focus on one, so here goes:

1. “This book is like a baby that needs to be born and I am looking for a stable.” Can we just say that as a general rule it’s a bad idea to compare your book to baby Jesus? (This query was received in mid-December, so I guess the author thought he was being seasonal.) Baby Jesus did not need editing. Mary didn’t send the bambino back and say, “Well, all the basic baby organs are in place, but his eyes are too far apart, he has redundant navels, and I’m not thrilled with the proposed Jesus title. Can you fix those problems in the second draft?” Those are the kinds of things an editor does. But when an author proclaims that a book is “in its final draft, ready for publication,” the author is imagining that having an editor is superfluous, because the book is already perfect. Real authors know they need editors.

2. “I have decided not to send a proposal.” (Read: “Ordinary rules do not apply to me. I am a genius, so I don’t have to follow the steps that lesser mortals do.”) This writer seemed to think that the formality of a book proposal existed merely to make his life difficult, and that the proposal was therefore an optional step. It isn’t. A book proposal exists so that an editor can quickly assess writers’ proposed projects and gauge the writers themselves, which is why there are whole sections devoted to platform, marketing, and target audience. If you don’t want to write a book proposal, that’s fine. Just don’t expect that you’ll make the leap from writing for yourself to working with a professional publishing house.

3. “A few moments with the manuscript should be enough to sell an editor with eyes to see.” It’s entertaining when authors assume that editors have nothing better to do than sit around sipping martinis and hoping against hope that someone might send them an entire manuscript to critique. Editors don’t have time to read whole manuscripts, people! Especially manuscripts that an author has already announced will most likely be published elsewhere. Between editors’ interminable meetings, the avalanche of emails, and all the projects already waiting in the queue, most are doing overtime as it is. Don’t insult them by imagining that they’re just dying to read your whole damn book and have the time to do so.

4. “I intend to publish in March 2010.” Well, bully for you. Be aware, however, that a traditional publishing house is not going to stop on a dime to release your book three months hence just because you think that would be nifty. Traditional publishing houses generally acquire books one to three years in advance, and sometimes beyond. Giving a prospective editor a timetable—particularly one with an impossible turnaround time—communicates that you have no earthly idea how publishing works.

I’ll spare you the unusually acidic rejection letter I sent this guy (I’m extremely kind with rejection letters in general). But as an update, he did decide to go with a traditional publisher, which put out the book a year after his query to me. As of now it does not have a single review on Amazon, and is ranked somewhere near the two-million mark in sales.

The editing image is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

I started this series with some softball advice: Don't mention in a query letter that God told you to write this book. Most of you were probably patting yourselves on the back when you read that, because you're not psychotic. (Well done, you!) So today's advice is a little less intuitive to sane people: Don't tell your publisher that you're happy to do interviews.

Let me explain. Of course you are thrilled to do interviews. That's a given. But telling a publisher that you're "happy to" do them actually sends the wrong message.

What you're communicating is: "I know it's the publisher's job to set up interviews, media appearances, speaking engagements, and all that other exciting stuff that I associate with being a bestselling author. I will deign to show up when and where you tell me to."

What you need to be communicating is: "I understand that book promotion is a partnership between an author and a publisher, and that authors are expected to take the lead in bringing a built-in audience, establishing themselves as experts in the media, and creating their own appearances and speaking engagements."

In other words, dear newbie author, at least 75% of book promotion is going to fall on your shoulders. (It's probably 90% if you're publishing with a really small house, as many new authors do.)

The question your query needs to answer is: What do you bring to the table?

A dream query letter demonstrates that the author knows she's in the lead here. For example, I once received a query letter that listed the cities the author had spoken in during recent months about that topic, the cities where the author would be speaking in months to come, and a sampling of the media interviews the author had already conducted on the topic. This author was proving not only that he was an expert in the content of his book, but that he was already on the road to promote the book, building an audience every day.

Authors who have supersized expectations of what their publishers can do to make them stars are anathema to those publishers. We've just had too many experiences with divas who don't understand how publishing works. We can't make you a star, period. You have to do that yourself, building your platform over years with very hard work. (How many of that author's speaking engagements were paid or glamorous, for example? Probably only a handful. But he got on the road anyway because he knew it was the #1 way to meet readers.)

But authors who are self-starters, who demonstrate enthusiasm for promoting their work, are in great demand. Publishers want to represent these authors' work again and again.

If you'd like to learn more about writing a great query letter and book proposal, the gold standard is still Michael Larsen's How to Write a Book Proposal, a classic how-to which was just updated and expanded last year. And for great advice on building your platform before you begin contacting publishers, so as to give yourself the best chance of success, check out Christina Katz's Get Known Before the Book Deal, also from Writer's Digest Books.

For other posts in this series:

#1: "God told me to write this book"

#3: "This book is ready for publication"

The "Do not" image is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

This first short post in a five-part series aims to help authors avoid five all-too-common pitfalls that can instantly derail their query letters. First up: "God told me to write this book." I'm always surprised when this happens, but it does occur with a bizarre frequency.

For the record, don't say that God (or Jesus, or Saint Whoever, or Ganesha) told you to write this book. Just don't.

Because I work in religion publishing, I probably see more of these query letters than the average editor, but a friend of mine who acquires fiction says it happens to her, too. Whatever kind of book you write -- even if you write about religion -- don't invoke a divine imprimatur as some kind of proof that you're worth publishing. It's a sure-fire magic trick to make your query letter disappear.

The worst was from a guy who told me that God not only told him to write a book, but that God had written the book, and all he needed was a publisher to get God's word out there. Unfortunately, this communication happened not via email, which I could ignore, but in person when he stopped by our booth at an academic conference.

There was no escape, so I talked to him for a few minutes, and asked him if he understood that having a traditional publisher would mean that God's 150,000-word (!) book would be edited. Editing is what editors do, I explained. God did not want his book edited, he responded. Couldn't we just slap our logo on it and enjoy the millions upon millions of dollars that would naturally flow in after publishing a book written by God?

I gently pointed him and God to a couple of self-publishing options. I don't think they're going to land a book contract anytime soon.

What else should you not say in your query letter?

#2: "I'm happy to do interviews"

#3: "This book is ready for publication"

This weekend when I got into an elevator at a convention hotel, one of the four guys already inside was whistling. It was a bit annoying.

"Stop whistling," one of his friends said.  "He's not whistling," said another friend. "He's just doing natural theology."

I am definitely at the AAR, I thought.

It was my fourteenth time attending the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature meeting, where religion scholars from all over the nation (and the world) gather to discuss important topics that everyone else has the good sense not to care about. I've been with AAR through thick and thin, including its painful divorce from SBL, when for several years the two organizations' thousands of children had to go to separate meetings in different cities because Mommy and Daddy couldn't get along. (They have since gotten back together, thanks for asking, though they live their own lives and see other people.)

I confess I don't see the academic point of AAR and SBL. It's rare that a session truly inspires great or new scholarship; many sessions are terrific but in a lot of cases those ideas have already been put out in the ether online. When I look around during sessions I see people coming in late and leaving early (guilty), tweeting (guilty), and planning in advance what brilliant question they will ask at the end to impress their dissertation advisers or faculty colleagues (not guilty, but only because I always leave early).

Yet I thoroughly love this meeting. The academic purpose of gathering in our thousands may be diminishing, but the social point is as strong as ever. As an editor, there is nothing like sitting across the table from an author and getting to know that writer as more of a full person. I also see my colleagues, compare notes about what is and is not working in publishing (or parenting, or life); these people have become good friends I look forward to seeing year after year.

And just because the planned academic discussions don't do much for me doesn't mean that exciting scholarship and new ideas don't happen everywhere else: over lunch, in the hallways, at the alumni gatherings and publisher receptions. When you get throngs of intelligent people together like that, some superb ideas are bound to bubble up.

The new Mormon Matters podcast features Fiona Givens talking about The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life, the book she's written with her husband Terryl Givens. Joanna Brooks and I sing an enthusiastic backup.

As I blogged a few weeks ago, I think this book (published last month by Deseret) is one of the loveliest offerings in recent memory. It explains Mormonism not in terms of dogma but in terms of the God we worship -- the God who weeps, who desires our joy, and who will bring all of us back to heaven. I hope everybody buys at least five copies as Christmas gifts.

This episode is short by Mormon Matters standards, at 1:24, but it's longer than the hour we had originally planned because once we got started talking about all that is gorgeous about Mormon theology it was hard to stop. Fiona does such a beautiful job here of explaining what she, a British convert, found attractive about Mormon belief, and tracing those beliefs in literature, philosophy, and poetry.

Here's the episode description:

This episode was planned to be an exploration of the joys and perils of being a public face of Mormonism, especially as a woman, and in particular as women who write and speak about Mormon theology. What it ended up being is a rich, wise, affectionate, celebratory, pragmatic exploration of LDS theology, community life, and connections with ideas and people that truly are among the lovely and of good report in wider religious discourse. Using the jumping off point of Fiona and Terryl Givens’ new book, The Good Who Weeps: How Mormons Make Sense of Life, Fiona Givens, Joanna Brooks, Jana Riess, and Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon go deep, laugh, commiserate, but mostly celebrate the depth and richness of the Mormon vision of God, life, purposes, and possibilities.

My thanks go out to Dan Wotherspoon for organizing this memorable conversation.  Enjoy!

The close-up image of the orange flower is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

As I head into the Thanksgiving season, I am, like many people, trying to cultivate the value of gratitude. The problem is that Thanksgiving is arriving at an inconvenient time this year when a number of things seem to be going wrong with health, finances, blah blah . . . I won't bore you with details. But when it's a challenge to be thankful, I turn to the most thankful person I know.

Who is not actually a person. He is a dog.

Regular readers of this blog may remember that last Thanksgiving Day, Onyx was on death's door and the vet thought he was a goner. Thanks for all your prayers; he's doing great now. In fact, these are the lessons he wants me to impart to the world as Thanksgiving draws near once again.

1. Today is going to be the best day EVER! Just remember that, OK? So in the morning before your people get up, go right next to their heads and breathe heavily with excitement so that they, too, will catch your enthusiasm about this being the best day EVER. It will be even better than yesterday, which was the best day to date.
2. After eating breakfast, be sure to always go find the person who fixed your meal for you and nuzzle their hand in gratitude. They always remember to feed you. They are therefore the best humans ever. And isn't food just amazing?
3. Be grateful all morning that you can work like a dog. This often involves working with your eyes closed -- whether you're on the couch, the dog bed, or the regular bed that you're not actually supposed to jump on. Work is so important.
4. During the lunch hour, paw your human insistently so that she understands it's time to stop working and enjoy the neighborhood. Drag her to the front door. Isn't it great when people understand what you're telling them? Communication is so important.
5. When you get outside, run around in circles a few times and bark with joy. You love your yard! You love your life!
6. In the neighborhood, take time to greet your friends and sniff their butts. Smelling their butts indicates that you think they are wonderful and interesting. And they are. They are the best friends you've ever had!
7. When you walk around and read your pee-mail, savor the moment. Someone took the time to leave you a message: "Rover was here!" So leave a message back and be grateful for friends and smells and this fabulous world.
8. OMG, did we mention that this is the best day EVER? Are you having fun yet?
9. If, during the course of your day, you come across any humans who seem to not quite understand that this is actually the best day EVER, it is your job to cheer them up. As a hint, butt-sniffing is not as effective at communicating love to humans as it is to fellow dogs. But a well-timed cuddle is always appropriate. Which leads us to the most important gratitude rule:
10. When the people you love walk in the front door, drop everything in your excitement. Rush to them, jump up and down, slather them with kisses. They are the most remarkable and beautiful creatures in your world, and you have to let them know that every single day -- especially this, your best day EVER.

In the weeks leading up to the 2012 election, a flurry of media articles explored Mormonism and its role in American life. Many of these were very well done (including this CNN piece on what the White House might look like if Mitt Romney were president); it’s become clear to me that most journalists are committed to understanding more about the Mormon faith and its people.

I would say that the quality of journalistic coverage of Mormonism has improved over the course of the year, with highlights from NBC, the New York Times, and many others. This is very good news—not just for Mormons, but for all minority faiths.

However, I’m not so sanguine about the American people who comment on these articles. For example, I tried to read the first comments on the CNN article, but gave up after the first few dozen because they were so dang predictable. Here are some samples (out of order) of the more than 2,000 comments that article elicited:

Side 1: “As a Christian who worked for and with many Mormons during my career as an engineer, I can only say that if Romney wins, GOD HELP US. As a group, the Mormons are self-centered and focused only on spreading their brand of religion to others. Romney would be unable to ignore the years of cult-like brain-washing he has been exposed to by his elders; he would act instinctively in times of crisis to protect fellow Mormons, and turn his back on the rest of us non-Mormons. Again, GOD HELP US if Romney's elected; life as we know it will cease to exist in America, and we'll all be to blame in that event.”

Side 2: "The Book of Mormon says liars go to HELL.”

Side 1: “Where does it say adults who still believe in fairy tales go?”

Side 2: “I cannot believe the comments on this article. Yes Mormons ARE Christian. That is so ridiculous. We believe in Christ. We have faith in him which compels us to follow what he taught. Christ is my Redeemer and Creator. I believe there is good in all religions and it is wonderful that we can all meet together to learn and strengthen each other in our faith. Kathy, on every LDS meetinghouse it says, "visitors welcome". I have invited many people to our services. They are not secret. If you are so curious go sit in on a service. For all of those who hate mormons so much I bet you know and respect a few (there are over 14 million of us and counting). Show a little tolerance, love, and respect for God's children (as Jesus taught).

Side 1: “Well here is another one for everyone... Acccording to the prophecies of Mormanism, when a Morman is elected President of the United States, the government will fall... shortly after, the 100.000 faithful will set out and kill all non-believers. In other words, if you don't belong to the church, you will be executed. This, ladies and gentlemen, comes from the doctrine directly from the church itself. Pretty amazing ‘cult’ mentality, no?”

Side 2: “Yeah, sure. I'll be hanging on every word of some bozo who can't even spell ‘Mormon’ correctly. I'm sure you know ALL about it.”

And they’re off, both sides abandoning reason and civility in their mutual passion for demonstrating that their opponents are imbeciles. Occasionally someone will attempt to provide a voice of balance and reason into the conversation:

Ben: “It seems obvious to me, just from these comments, why this article was written. The amount of ignorance about Mormons and their faith in this country is staggering. While this article does come off a bit patronizing, its still worth mentioning some of the unique scenarios a Mormon president would present.

As a general rule, the Mormons I know have been good and happy people. Of course, I've also known Mormons who had failing marriages and kids straying into substance abuse. In that respect, Mormons are no different from any other people of faith. As to the missionary side of the faith, I find it deeply hypocritical of Christians to find fault with others pushing their religion. As an athiest, I find myself accosted by pushy Christians far more often than Mormons. Perhaps evangelicals ought to find out what that word means before accusing others of pushy evangelism.”

And then someone else will criticize the third party who is seeking balance:

CP: “Ben – If you are a fellow atheist, at least learn how to spell it.”

I look for the day when news stories and articles about some aspect of Mormon life are followed by an insightful discussion of the actual material presented, rather than what it always devolves into: another fruitless debate between anti-Mormon critics on the one hand and LDS apologists on the other, all weighing the merits and demerits not of the specific article itself but of the truth claims of the entire Mormon religion.

I’m not holding my breath, though.
 

The troll warning sign is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

"You have a polar bear in your freezer!" my friend exclaimed as she searched for the ice cream. "Why would you put a polar bear in the freezer?"

Well, it's a long story, but the basic point is this: Out of all the possible homes for that stuffed Coca-Cola polar bear in our house, the freezer is where he feels happiest and most himself. Which is exactly what home is supposed to be.

So even though we have a very small freezer and there never seems to be enough room for all our stuff, that polar bear has lived there for about fifteen years. Three different states, three different freezers, but always the same cheerful, self-actualized polar bear.

I've been thinking about this recently as I listen to Gretchen Rubin's new book Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Daily Life. Rubin, who also wrote the bestseller The Happiness Project, makes the point repeatedly that being happy at home is about simply being who you are. Sounds pretty basic, right? "Be Gretchen," she tells herself.

Be Gretchen. Be Jana. Be yourself.

It's a fine book, and a smart one. (Anyone who is tempted to dismiss Rubin as a superficial "year-in-the-life" writer should give her a chance. Her writing is thoughtful and well-researched. She enjoys literature and philosophy; it's not for nothing that "read Samuel Johnson" is one of the subtitular employments that she discovers will contribute to her happiness at home.)

Right now as I write this in my south-facing office, the sunlight is pouring through my window and spilling on to my desk (which sounds romantic, and it is, but the glare is almost painful). My dog is on the couch behind me, contendedly licking his paws; much of the wall space is covered with books.

This is a Jana room. Nothing fancy, but the furniture is comfortable for reading and writing, even if the blanketed couch is covered with dog fur. (I really need to take care of that.) This room is my freezer, the place uniquely suited to my needs and temperament. Since I don't have to share it with anyone of the human species, I got to decide on the color, the furniture placement, and whether it would be messy or neat.

According to Rubin, most of us know that our homes should be places where we feel most at ease, but we get a little too caught up in what others will think of them. Magazines tell us that "Your home should reflect who you are," while what they really mean is, "Your home should reflect the much cooler person you want to project to the world rather than the boring sweatpant-clad person you actually are."

Reading the book has caused me to catalog the many things I love about our home: the wood floors, the fireplace, the built-in bookshelves my husband made, the radiant floor heating he installed in our bathroom. I love the 87-year-old front door that you have to know just the trick of unlocking. I love the postage-stamp sized urban yard that can be mowed in ten minutes. It's a house with some history, an unpretentious but solid sanctuary. It feels like an old friend.

I hope you have your polar-bear places, and that your home is where you can feel completely, liberatingly yourself.

Tuesday's election was historic not because of who was or was not elected president -- however important that contest may have been -- but because it showed that our nation has crossed a threshold in accepting LGBTQ people as equals. I am thrilled.

Consider the results:

• Voters approved of same-sex marriage in Maryland, Washington, and Maine. Maine had rejected it just a few years ago.
• Minnesota voters said no to a measure that would have amended its state constitution to define "marriage" as heterosexual unions between a man and a woman. Voters in 30 states had approved such measures in previous elections, making it possible for conservative activists to claim that every time such a measure had been sent directly to the American people, the American people had voted down gay marriage. That's not the case any more.
• In neighboring Wisconsin, a lesbian, Tammy Baldwin, became the nation's first openly gay Senator. Moreover, as one commentator put it, "her sexual orientation was largely a non-issue in the race." 
• In Iowa, voters did not unseat a judge who had been part of the seven-member state Supreme Court that had unanimously upheld same-sex marriage in 2007. According to the New York Times, two other judges who had found in favor of gay marriage had been kicked off the bench by angry Iowa conservatives in 2010. This year's election was a different story.
• Voters re-elected for president a man who announced earlier this year that he had changed his mind about same-sex marriage, and that he now supports full marriage equality.

Clearly, President Obama is not the only American who has changed his mind. The Huffington Post quotes Bishop Gene Robinson's excitement for the change in the nation's mood:

"This is a real national moment. It shows that America is ready for the mainstreaming of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."

I'm not saying that our nation has achieved anything like full equality for LGBTQ people. But I'm encouraged by the fact that the tide seems to have palbably shifted.

The signs are not just political. On Saturday night at my husband's high school reunion in red-state Kentucky, we were both glad to see that no one batted an eyelash about a gay couple appearing there as a couple. Even though his friend Brian had not been out in adolescence, nobody seemed surprised to learn he was gay. Everyone had gotten used to the notion of gay couples and appeared more concerned with the really important questions, like who had gotten fat since high school.

There's no doubt that conservatives will continue to hammer the issue of homosexuality, but it seems their fearmongering is falling on deaf ears as Americans realize that those states that have already adopted same-sex marriage haven't yet fallen into the sea. All of the worries that the presence of same sex marriage in a state would somehow "ruin" or "damage" the sanctity of heterosexual marriage have not come true.

Conservatives will also continue to speak about the "gay agenda," a terrifying specter of homosexual infiltration into the American mainstream.

And in this case, I agree with their language. There is such a thing as a gay agenda. It is an agenda that aims for all Americans to be judged by their actions and by the content of their character, not by their choice of dates to the high school reunion.

On Tuesday, that agenda became quite a bit more real.

The images of rainbow hands and a family with two moms are both used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

Many people are saying that this year's election has been the most contentious and polarizing in American history. They obviously don't read American history. 

Take the election of 1800. The Jeffersonians claimed that Adams was insane, while the Adams camp responded in turn that Jefferson was a howling atheist. Adams's own Federalist party was in a state of interior disarray bordering on disaster, as Alexander Hamilton made his private feud with Adams embarrassingly, irrevocably public. And Aaron Burr was in the midst of it all, like a Megamind supervillain bent on wreaking havoc while shouting, "Bwa ha ha!"

The splendid book A Magnificent Catasrophe tells the story of this most devastating of elections. Far more was at stake then than in any presidential election of our lifetime, because the entire political system was still evolving.

The first elections the US had mounted were very different from elections today. The presidential and vice-presidential candidates hadn't run as a team, but as opponents: The electoral college gave the top vote-getter the top job, and the second-place finisher the vice-presidency.

Imagine Barack Obama winning tonight, then having to turn around tomorrow and create a new government with his archrival-turned-junior-partner, Mitt Romney. Or the other way around. If you can conjure up the bitterness and contempt that such a situation would create today, then couple that with the very real anxiety that a near-destitute young nation with not one but two superpowers poised to attack must have been feeling, you'll get a glimmer of just how nasty the 1800 election became.

As RealClearPolitics said in a review of A Magnificent Catastophe:

Their colleagues were alternately earnest, backstabbing, and fickle, fueling a rancorous national debate. Loyalties shattered. Insults flew. And yet, in today's popular imagination, both men--John Adams and Thomas Jefferson--are often linked with filmy visions of quietude, temperance, and a more dignified, staid time. It's a wonder, when you think about it, what a few hundred years and some powdered white wigs can do.

If you read American history you know that the real "miracle" of the United States's founding isn't that America won an unlikely revolution against the world's greatest military power of that day, or even that our Framers successfully created a democratic republic in the wake of the revolutionary war.

It's that we kept that democracy alive, even through the election of 1800.

So let's cut the "worst polarization" hyperbole surrounding the 2012 election. This is ugly, but it's not the worst.

One thing is certain: tomorrow, one way or the other, we will wake up to a robust and enduring democractic republic, one that has endured polarization far worse than what we're facing now. (Ever heard of the Civil War?) Let's all take a moment and be thankful for that.

In 2008, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander suffered a case of bacterial meningitis, a disease seen in one in ten million adults each year. It is rare-to-impossible that Alexander survived with no neurological deficit. Even rarer is that he claims that during his comatose week with no brain activity, his soul was getting a personal tour of heaven.

I first heard of his new book Proof of Heaven because Alexander and I share the same literary agent, the firecracker Gail Ross. She gave me a copy when I was in her office a few weeks ago, thinking I would enjoy Alexander's first-person account of his near-death experience and what it taught him about "life after life."

Let me lay my cards out on the table. Since I am a Christian, I am probably predisposed to enjoy -- and, more importantly, give credence to -- Alexander's absorbing account. So you are certainly entitled to take what I say here with an entire container of Morton's ... but I am going to be thinking about this book for a very long time.

In part that was because this weekend while I read the book something else was happening in our family that functioned as a grim reminder of illness, frailty, and human mortality. My emotions are pretty raw right now. As such I found the book an especially powerful and hopeful reminder that this life is not all there is.

I've not read any other books about NDEs, but I have certainly been aware of the usual tropes of such literature: the dying/dead person proceeds down a dark tunnel toward a white light, where s/he is greeted by deceased family members, learns that heaven is a real and beautiful place, and returns (sometimes reluctantly) to finish out the course of mortal life.

On the surface, Alexander's account is pretty true to the genre as I imagine it. His Vergil is a beautiful young woman who opens up new universes and takes him far into heaven's many layers. God, he says, is "an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light." God gives us free will, which

... serves the much higher role of allowing our ascendance in the timeless alternate dimension. Our life down here may seem insignificant, for it is minute in relation to the other lives and other worlds that also crowd the invisible and visible universes. But it is also hugely important, for our role here is to grow toward the Divine, and that growth is closely watched by the beings in the worlds above . . . .

We -- the spiritual beings currently inhabiting our evolutionarily developed mortal brains and bodies, the product of the earth and the exigencies of the earth -- make the real choices. True thought is not the brain's affair. But we have -- in part by the brain itself -- been so trained to associate our brains with what we think and who we are that we have lost the ability to realize that we are at all times much more than the physical brains and bodies that do -- or should do -- our bidding. (p. 84)

In other words, as Yoda put it more succinctly, "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

In the weeks since its publication Proof of Heaven has climbed the bestseller charts and landed its author some major national media spots. (I'd encourage you not to watch any of those segments online until after you've read the book, though, because they give away a marvelous surprise at the end of Alexander's story.)

The book has also brought the skeptics out in droves, including Sam Harris and others. (It doesn't help that Simon & Schuster covered the book almost exactly the same way as Lisa Genova's novel Still Alice, which is about a woman losing her mind. I'm not sure what in the world they were thinking.)

Responding to a recent cover article Alexander wrote for Newsweek, Harris sniffs:

But Alexander’s account is so bad—his reasoning so lazy and tendentious—that it would be beneath notice if not for the fact that it currently disgraces the cover of a major newsmagazine.

Harris then proceeds to dissect (and essentially disembowel) Alexander's claims about the neuroscience of his cerebral cortex shutting down during the coma. Then he provides what he sees as a logical scientific and perfectly natural explanation for what happened to Alexander.

We would expect no less from Harris. We all tend to see what we are predisposed to want to see, which is why I warned you ahead of time that I am likely among the audience of religiously-inclined people who will want to believe this book is true.

But I could not put it down.

Last weekend I gave a "Mormonism 101" talk at a local Protestant congregation. The audience was warm and welcoming, with the exception of one woman (who was not a member of the congregation, but a local who seems to enjoy debating Mormons). She had several questions, one of which seemed bent on getting me to admit that Mormon theology picks and chooses what it wants to keep from the Bible and ignores all the other parts.

I tried to generalize the question away from Mormonism because this is an issue that affects all Christians, not just Mormons. I said that all Christians pick and choose what parts of the Bible we will heed. There is simply no such thing as a fully "biblical Christian" today.

I pointed out that the suit I was wearing was made of mixed fibers from two different plants, which violates Leviticus 19:19. (Leviticus is not down with mixing much of anything, whether it's fibers or bodily discharge. Just so you know.) I said that as a woman standing up in a church teaching men, I was directly defying the apostle Paul. And to work on a Sunday -- which is essentially what I was doing in giving a PowerPoint presentation and having books for sale -- was surely a flagrant breach of Sabbath law.

The woman answered me by saying something about not being at all sure that a mixed fiber prohibition was in the Bible -- she'd never heard of that. Then she persisted with her original line of questioning.

"Mormons pick and choose," she insisted, "but I don't pick and choose."

Oh, really?

I got a little sarcastic at that point. I noted out loud that her hair seemed awfully short, considering that the New Testament says that long hair is a woman's glory (1 Corinthians 11:13-15). Plus her head was uncovered, right there in church. Hmmm. Isn't not wearing a veil an example of picking and choosing?

And let's look at some of the dozens of other things I could have said but didn't:

• I eat shrimp and pork, which according to the Bible I should not; I don't eat locusts and beetles, which according to the Bible I should (Lev. 11:22). (As Buffy would say, "Raise your hand if eeeewwwwww.")
• I don't cloister myself or avoid touching men when I'm menstruating (Lev. 15).
• I actually think it's OK that blind and deaf people are welcome members of the family of God, and that they can even be pastors and priests. This is shamefully unbiblical (Lev. 21:17-18).
• I have a friend who is a Wiccan, and I have not killed her yet. I am not only suffering a witch to live (Exodus 22:18), but I thoroughly enjoy her company.
• I have also not yet murdered the many members of my family who don't believe in God or who worship a different God (Deut. 13 and 17, various verses). Their requisite deaths would be really inconvenient, because that's pretty much my entire family.

Actually, I'm glad that my interlocutor was so obviously not a Bible-believing Christian herself, because according to those Deuteronomic verses she should have annihilated me when it was established that Mormon beliefs were so very different from her own.

And circling back to Mormonism: Yes. She's right. Mormons absolutely do pick and choose which parts of the BIble we will heed. We don't say the Lord's Prayer, for example, even though Jesus was crystal-clear that that's how he'd like his followers to pray. We don't believe in a fire-and-brimstone hell.

But we also take some things from the Bible that other Christians seem to have ignored. We're the only Christian faith that performs baptism for the dead, but in 1 Corinthians 15 the Apostle Paul appears to have taken that spiritual practice for granted. He also spoke of three levels of heaven (2 Cor. 12), which Mormons teach are the celestial, terrestrial, and telestial kingdoms.

So, Mormonism is a mixed bag when it comes to the Bible. So are all Christian faiths. Anyone who says otherwise is remarkably obtuse.

Oh, but there I go again violating another major principle of the Bible, one I actually believe in: "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things."

Damn you, Bible!

The image of the Holy Bible and the locusts you should be having for your biblical dinner tonight are both used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

Maybe you don’t think of “Twilight” and “important” in the same sentence. But according to Tanya Erzen’s new book Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It, maybe you should.

Twilight fever seems to have cooled a bit in the last year or so. Whether that’s because it has run its natural course as the books and films wind to their conclusion or because Kristen Stewart notoriously cheated on Robert Pattinson is anyone’s guess. But the series remains one of popular culture’s greatest phenomena.

Why do middle-aged women swoon over Edward? Why might fans gather at conventions, start their own religion (“cullenism”), or become enmeshed in writing and reading fan fiction based on the series? The astonishing popularity this year of 50 Shades of Gray is a vavoomish case in point.

Fanpire argues that Twilight is worthy of study not only because millions of women have devoured the books like candy (BTW, according to Erzen, readers are 98% women and 85% white), but also because the books are “a rare example of popular culture written by and for women.”

Good point. That also explains why the series is so often sniffed at and dismissed.

The media doesn’t typically denounce men as "hysterical" when guys spend thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft or fantasy football; why are women singled out for ridicule? Erzen writes:

“Rather than dubbing these moments of hysteria or adolescent folly, adult women’s emotional responses to Twilight are an indication that they’re seizing something invigorating and emotionally cathartic from Twilight that is absent from the rest of their lives.” (41)

The question driving the book is: What do women find in Twilight that they’re not getting from their everyday lives?

It’s not just the predictable answer – romance – though that’s certainly present in the series’ popularity. Edward has become the standard some women use in evaluating men. (Edward, born in 1901, should be having his Bilbo Bagginsesque eleventy-first birthday right about now, even though Edward is so hot he would never have Hobbit hair growing between his toes.)

So if it’s not purely about romance, what is it? Erzen also sees a counterintuitive answer: female empowerment. She sensitively analyzes how Twilight – a series that many people, myself included, have criticized for its retrogressive gender roles – has also contributed to remarkable female bonding and belonging. 
 

If you’re trying to live all the commandments of the Bible for women, does wearing a hoodie count as covering your head?

Rachel Held Evans hopes so. In her new book A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master, she takes us through a hilarious year of kitchen disasters, ethical questions, fashion dilemmas, and new adventures in her quest to live a godly life.

Right now she is on the media circuit to promote the book. She appeared on the Today show last week and early this week was supposed to be on The View, but that didn’t happen because of the storm.

So here's my take. If you enjoy memoir, want to know more about the Bible (which, as she points out, is not actually “the best place to look for traditional family values” [48]), and have a robust sense of humor, you should check this out. I enthusiastically blurbed an advance reader copy earlier this year:

When Christians allude to “biblical womanhood,” they seem to mean someone safely feminine and clad in floral prints. In her project, Rachel Held Evans uncovers something far more mysterious, a picture by turns glorious and disturbing.  Blending laugh-out-loud humor with rigorous cultural critique, Evans discovers that living the actual teachings of the Bible means surrendering idealized role-playing in favor of becoming an eshet chayil—a woman of strength and wisdom.

The author takes on the sexist idiocy of Mark Driscoll (you go, girl!). She looks at the modesty wars and the mixed messages our culture gives to women. And in my favorite chapter, she wades into the throes of motherhood by “adopting” a Chucky-esque doll baby that is programmed with a chip to eat, cry, and cause havoc like a real baby.

(After posting triumphant pictures of herself feeding the baby on her blog, one of her readers pounced by expressing concern that she was feeding her computer baby with a bottle and not the breast. Welcome to the mommy wards, Rachel.)

Rachel comes from an evangelical background, and much of the book is about parsing the difficulties – and the joys – of that legacy for women in the church. There’s a rare honesty here, not just about the intimate details of things like biblical menstruation, but about truly taboo subjects, like maybe not wanting a non-computer baby someday.

She expresses a strong generosity of spirit and a passion for the full flourishing of women. Feminism, she says, is merely “the radical notion that women are people.” After some cogent exegesis of biblical passages that address women’s roles and leadership, she argues that injunctions against women speaking in church, for example, were actually directed at a very specific group of young widows who had begun teaching but had not yet been trained in what Christian beliefs were. Holding on to such atavisms now is actually turning people away from Christian faith. She concludes:

It is a tragic and agonizing irony that instructions once delivered for the purpose of avoiding needless offense are now invoked in ways that needlessly offend, [and] that words once meant to help draw people to the gospel now repel them. (262)

Last Saturday when scrolling through Facebook, I saw a headline several times about a Missouri pastor whose anti-gay speech was getting a lot of traction on YouTube. I ignored these (I am not the type to waste time on social media getting ticked off about things I know are going to make me angry) until I saw the pastor's name: Phil Snider.

Wait. No, seriously? That Phil Snider?

That can't be, I thought. I've met Phil and corresponded with him, and I can't imagine he would give a speech condemning homosexuals.

All I can say is: watch the video if you're not among the 2.5 million who already have, and be sure to hang around to the very, very end. Then come back and check out this interview that Phil granted me this week despite being inundated with emails and requests. --JKR

What gave you the idea to do an ironic speech like that, drawing on actual historical quotes about racial intermarriage?

As I kept listening to conversations by religious people in Springfield against the non-discrimination ordinance, I noticed that the argument sounded virtually identical to what white preachers in the south were saying in the 1950s and 60s (although one of my friends informed me that one of the more popular quotes I used was actually in support of slavery, which of course makes things even worse!). When I listened to the rhetoric in opposition to the ordinance, all of it -- not some of it, but all of it -- was cast in the name of religion. So I started doing searches for sermons that were pro-segregation and such and came across a bunch of quotes that were virtually identical to what I had been hearing in Springfield. It was actually a pretty simple sermon to write, but a terribly difficult one to deliver (hearing those words pass through my own mouth was not a pleasant feeling). I owe a lot to Fred Grimm from the Miami Herald, who wrote a wonderful article that helped get the ball rolling.

Watching the audience in the background, it doesn't seem like many of them actually understood what was going on. What was the reaction in the room?

Some of my friends are directly behind me in the video, looking all stoic. Even though I didn't tell them what I was planning to do, I think they had to know I had something up my sleeve. My friend Stephanie Perkins, a fantastic community organizer and activist with Promo, can be seen videoing my talk with her smart phone. I'm pretty sure she and several others knew I was going to do some sort of reversal. I'm also friends with a couple of people on City Council, so they had to know something was up as well. But aside from those who knew me, I think it took a while for the reality of the moment to sink in. The anger and animosity people felt as I read those words was very strong, and it is really difficult to move from deep-seated anger to joy in just a matter of moments.

After giving the speech I walked out of the chamber to a location where you could watch the video feed (there was overflow seating), and the first person I saw said, "Oh man, you don't know how much I wanted to punch you! But then, I wanted to hug you!" We got a good laugh out of that, and that's kind of been the feeling from then on out.

What has the reaction been since then? Have you been surprised by all the media attention and by "going viral" courtesy of George Takei?

I'm really thankful to George Takei, Gawker, HuffPo, etc. and the many people who shared the video. It's been pretty much a non-stop flood of correspondence. I'm not used to having to decide which messages to respond to right away, and which to wait on. It's a new world for me. And I hope people understand. I still have all the normal kind of life things that I'm trying to hold together in the midst of all of this: working at a church, teaching at a university, not to mention three kids and a wife who I'm trying not to totally ignore. But yes, I've been incredibly surprised. I had no idea all of this would happen, much less so quickly. I never expected it. As Derrida or Caputo might say, it's part of the "unforeseeable future," something that we can't begin to plan on, that we can never quite be ready for, but comes knocking on our door nonetheless.

What is the most important message you hope people will take away from your comments at the council meeting?

Be careful of religious people who want to take a few verses out of the Bible in order to confirm their socially conditioned prejudices. I love these words from the great Presbyterian theologian William Placher:

“Any honest reading of the Bible will make it clear that it takes sins like greed, hatred, and lack of compassion much more seriously than it takes any sins having to with [homosexuality]. If a [church] singles out homosexuals for judgment and doesn’t speak and act forcefully on other matters where the Bible is far more forceful, therefore, it looks as though its motive is not faithfulness to scripture, but accepting the prejudices of contemporary society. In such cases, while Christians may claim to stand up against the values of our culture, in fact they are yielding to them. Friends I respect who struggle with this issue sometimes say, ‘But the church needs to take a stand somewhere. We have given up on any number of points, but as some point we need to draw a line and say that this behavior may be increasingly acceptable in our society, but it is not acceptable to the Christian community.’ I understand this concern. But, if we learn anything about moral judgment from the Gospels, it is surely that Christians should focus on the sins that our society rarely criticizes, especially when they are committed by the rich and powerful, not those already condemned and despised, as homosexuality so often is. Even if one concedes that homosexual intercourse is a sin—and, for reasons already noted, the biblical evidence does not persuade me of that—it is also a form of behavior that gets people fired from their jobs, beaten up, called rude names, generally treated with contempt in many parts of our society, and sometimes even murdered. As I write this, the top selling album in the country, by a young white ‘rapper,’ Eminem, includes songs that talk vividly about beating up and killing homosexuals. A version of the album for sale in chain stores in more conservative parts of the country has the worst of its profanity eliminated, but leaves these references to violence unchanged. Those who grow up gay generally have a hard time of it in contemporary America. Thus, the patterns of Jesus’ ministry would clearly imply that, even if homosexual behavior were a sin, here is precisely not the place to ‘draw the line.’ Far better to draw it in the face of a sin like greed, which our culture generally treats with something like admiration, especially when it is masked as ‘success.’ Jesus, after all, singled out for particular condemnation the sins that his society accepted as compatible with respectability. Those who were condemned by society anyway he tended to treat rather generously. Here as elsewhere, Jesus stood with the outsiders, the disreputable, and the fearful, rather than the self-confident and self-righteous.” (Placher, Jesus the Savior, 101-2)

Plus, to state the obvious, there are all kinds of things in the Bible that self-proclaimed "Bible-believing Christians" don't begin to adhere to. Even when people use the verse from Leviticus 20:13 ("If a man lies with a male as with a woman, they've committed an abomination") against those who are gay and lesbian, very few of them actually follow through with the rest of the verse, which commands that "both must be put to death." I've never seen a more non-sensical bumper sticker than the one that reads "The Bible Says It, I Believe It, That Settles It." Really? So if your kids talk back to you then you'll stone them? Women should be treated as property, or less than equal to men? C'mon now.

The Bible is full of a variety of perspectives -- it doesn't speak in a singular uniform fashion -- and people of faith have the responsibility to interpret the Bible in healthy ways that take into consideration science, reason, tradition(s), and experience. The Bible isn't some magical book that dropped from the sky. It was written by a variety of people in a variety of contexts trying to make sense of their world. Anytime someone claims to be speaking for God by quoting scripture, such claims must also be put to the test of love. To paraphrase St. Augustine: "If love is the only measure then the only measure of love is love without measure."

Or as my friend Tripp Fuller likes to say, "God has to be at least as nice as Jesus."

A couple of weeks ago my bumper sticker arrived, the one I had to special order. “I’m voting for Obama,” it proclaimed, “…and I’m a Mormon.”

In the last year, the LDS Church’s popular “I’m a Mormon” ads have created a brand with Mormons identifying themselves in an unexpected way (e.g., “I’m a drummer in a rock band!” or “I’m a competitive motorcyclist!”) and then following it up with the tagline, “and I’m a Mormon.”

But in my case, a different conjunction is in order. “And” is not enough. I’m voting for Obama because I am a Mormon.

I’m not alone in this, though as a Mormon Democrat I am a minority within a minority. There are more of us than people assume, even though in the current election, with a fellow Latter-day Saint running for president, approximately 84 percent of Mormons say they’ll be voting for Mitt Romney. This is significantly higher than the 60-odd percent of Mormons who self-identified as Republican in the 2006 Faith Matters Survey.

It hasn’t always been this way. In fact, at one time Mormons swung very much in the other direction. In the 1896 presidential election, 51 percent of the nation’s popular vote went to Republican William McKinley, but in the spanking new state of Utah McKinley captured only an anemic showing of 17.3 percent. According to Notre Dame political scientist David E. Campbell, Mormons went heavily for populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan that year instead.

The Democratic trend continued. From 1932 to 1948, Mormons echoed national sentiments by repeatedly electing Democrats FDR and Harry Truman to office, often by a larger margin than the rest of the nation. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson carried Utah by ten percentage points, and throughout the 1970s the Utah state legislature was solidly Democratic. (And there is evidence from sociologist Armand Mauss that Mormons outside of Utah were more liberal than their Utah counterparts on political and social issues, so the Utah voting patterns are probably a bit more conservative than American Mormons more generally.)

So. What happened to my people?

The LDS Church is careful as an institution to remain politically neutral, so how did the vast majority of American Mormons veer so far to the right?

Since the 1970s, Mormons have increasingly allied themselves with Republicans in matters political, as if the GOP is, as the old joke goes, God’s own party. Utah has become so reliably Republican that neither major party even campaigns there in force for presidential politics. For Republicans, winning Utah is a fait accompli, so why spend time and money there? For Democrats, winning Utah is an outlandish fantasy, so why spend time and money there?

Most everybody loses in a single-party system, so I’m proud to stand in a long tradition of Mormons who have voted on the other side. But it isn’t just history that drives me to be a Mormon Democrat; it’s belief.

As a Mormon, it’s my job to ensure that the poor are cared for. I believe the Book of Mormon’s explicit claims that our standing with God rests upon how we treat the poor—not just as individuals, but as societies. (King Benjamin’s sermon is a case in point.) As a Mormon I am called to vote for candidates who won’t stomp on the poor.

Romney does not look promising on this score. In fact, he appears more concerned with lining the pockets of the rich. According to the Tax Policy Center (as reported in the October issue of Money magazine), people earning more than $500,000 a year will get an 10% increase in after-tax earnings under Romney’s plan.

As a Mormon, it’s my job to protect life. This means all life, whether it’s ending the war in Iraq (thank you, President Obama) or decreasing the number of actual abortions that occur in America (thank you, President Clinton).

Republicans talk a big game about outlawing abortion, all while implementing policies that effectively contribute to abortion’s tragic proliferation. They want to cut health care, including programs like WIC; make contraception less available to women; end sex education in schools; and have no federal subsidies for child care. Those are all policies that chip away at women’s non-abortion options, particularly since women who live below the poverty line are four times as likely to have an abortion as women who do not.

As a Mormon, it’s my job to be a good steward of the earth. For all that Romney belongs to the same church I do, he does not seem remotely concerned about our planet’s future. He has mocked forward-thinking attempts to invest in clean energy sources and raising the standards for gas mileage in new cars. He calls the EPA “a tool in the hands of the president to crush the private enterprise system.” His views on the environment are short-sighted.

Let me say it again: I am voting for Obama because I am a Mormon, not in spite of it.

Earlier this month at BONCOM I had the privilege of hearing filmmaker Stephen Frandsen talk about Duck Beach to Eternity, a full-length documentary feature about Mormon single life that he’s created with Hadleigh Arnst.

The movie, which traces the real lives of four 20- and 30-something LDS singles as they take an annual Mormons-only pilgrimage for spring break in North Carolina, sparked two reactions in me:

1. Excitement that remarkable and original cultural expressions like this film are coming to light in the Mormon community; and
2. Wells of gratitude that I was already happily married by the time I converted to this religion, and never had to cope with the hazards of life as a Mormon single. Thank you, Jesus.

In other words, the movie reveals great humor and not a little pain. I hope it gains a wide audience, both Mormon and not. Its 82 minutes are entertaining and thought-provoking, and at least two of its main subjects had me cheering. (One even made me cry.)

Tonight is the movie’s sold-out premiere in New York City, and starting next week you can download the movie online. I interviewed the filmmakers for the lowdown. --JKR

JKR: Stephen is Mormon, and Hadleigh is not. How did you come together to make this movie?

Hadleigh: I heard about Duck Beach through friends of friends. The excitement and details of the event seemed kind of surreal to me, and fascinating. So Stephen and I sat down at the beginning of 2011 to figure out if we wanted to take on a feature like this project. A lot of my friends in the city were Mormon or had grown up Mormon, so I had a general curiosity in the culture.

Stephen: I thought it was a brilliant idea. At the time, I was dating Hillary, and we were close to getting married. [ed: After ten years on the Mormon dating scene, Stephen married Hillary, though they didn’t meet at Duck Beach.]

JKR: How did you get these four subjects in the documentary to let you follow their stories?

Stephen: In any documentary film, casting is one of the biggest obstacles -- building trust with your subjects. We gained credibility by having a non-Mormon viewpoint, an active Mormon viewpoint, and an ex-Mormon viewpont. [A third filmmaker, Laura Naylor, was not at the interview.]

Hadleigh: It’s hard, given that it’s our first documentary, to demonstrate our integrity and intentions.

Stephen: We’d done a documentary short that had treated the same material with condor and sympathy. But trust was key. Ryan and Melissa [two of the film’s main subjects], once they heard I had a calling in my branch, wanted to be part of it. They wanted to make sure I had a calling and was an active temple-goer before they knew they could trust me. I knew Brian and Stacey from other walks of life, and they were OK with it.

JKR: What was the main story you wanted to tell?

Stephen: I think the main story was that we wanted to show some contradictions and complexities that single Mormons face today. I think just going to this weekend party is a contradiction. It’s a spring break weekend, so you party, but you have this thing hanging over your head all the time that if you don’t get married, you won’t reach the highest levels of the Celestial Kingdom.

Hadleigh: By outward appearances, with a weekend party and the beach, it looks like any other party. But it’s not. There’s this whole other dimension.

Stephen: We as Mormons manage to party without stimulants.

JKR: Your production values look great. How much did the movie cost, and how did you fund it?

Stephen: We raised about $17,000 on Kickstarter, and the actual cost of the movie is somewhere between $80,000 and $100,000. It’s essentially self-funded through donors and short-term loans.  We expect to recoup the costs within a year.

JKR: How has it been received by your early test audiences?

Stephen: Very well. We played it in Seattle to sell-out crowds, with nothing but positive reviews.

Hadleigh: The most fun is that at every screening and focus group we’ve done, it always ends with lots of questions and discussions. This is a film about a world within a world, something that most people would never have the opportunity to see. If you show people an aspect of human culture and help them understand how it relates to their own lives, with characters who are open about their strengths and their struggles, the audience takes on their story and their cultural factors.

Stephen: The movie is like a Rorschach test, in how people can see themselves in it.

Hadleigh: It’s about relationships and marriage, which is something everyone can relate to on some level.

JKR: I often encourage Mormons to make their own art and culture, rather than just allowing themselves to be defined by others. I feel like this movie accomplished that.

Hadleigh: It was important to us to have every single voice in the film be a Mormon voice. And almost everyone we interviewed is single. It’s the idea of telling your own story, and telling about the things in your own culture, and this small piece of your culture.

* Religion News Service acknowledges that what constitutes “wild” may differ from one faith community to the next. In the case of Mormonism, “wild” may in fact connote a single keg of root beer. Yes, really.

In his new book Holy Nomad: The Rugged Road to Joy,  Matt Litton discusses some of the twists and turns of his own spiritual journey, and identifies four tools that can help us in our quest to follow God. Since he lives not far from me in Cincinnati, we sat down together recently for an interview about the book.

P.S. He probably will not like me boasting about him, but Matt was recently named one of the top 80 teachers in Ohio. He teaches high school English in Mariemont. --JKR

Why did you write this book?

It was a personal journey for me, because in a very real sense I was looking around at the people I connect with, the people I admire, and asking, “Where is the joy? Where is the spirituality in the things that we pursue?” I don’t know if it’s the pace of culture, but I went through a time in my life when I wasn’t feeling a lot of joy. I didn’t have those transcendental moments. I just walked into that tension of Jesus in the gospels saying that he came to bring us joy, and what our faith practice actually is.

So you were on a quest for joy. Did you find it?

I think I found a Jesus-centered nomadic spirituality. We bury ourselves in materialism, religiosity, addiction, jealousy, greed, bad relationships . . . . It’s like we’re constantly finding things to weigh us down.

I looked at the moment when Jesus calls Lazarus to follow him. He calls Lazarus forth and makes this big pronouncement to the people standing there. He wants them to know that he did this to show he is the source of life. Like Lazarus, we want to emerge from these dead places in our lives to a place of resurrection.

You talk in the book about four tools for spiritual nomads. What are they?

1. Trust: The first is trust that we will be taken care of, understanding the difference between needs and wants. For example, I checked the Internet to see when the new iPhone is coming out, and checked it every day, and that is clearly not a need.
2. Knowing our identity: Learning to find our identity in the Holy Nomad, understanding who we are. There’s something like $400 billion a year spent just on advertising in the United States. 
3. Imagination: We need the power of imagination to kind of bridge this gap between the reality of the here and now and a vision of eternity. God gave us the imagination to be able to do that. For example, my son Eli and I were in the grocery store. They had these tags that you could pay for and feed a family for a day. He pulled one off, and I asked him why he did it. He said, “I couldn’t imagine going without a dinner.”
4. Asking questions: One of my big problems growing up as an evangelical is that a lot of my questions were discouraged, and I find now that those questions actually enlighten and deepen my journey, my relationship with God. I think questions keep all of our relationships alive and healthy and moving forward.

You’ve mentioned that you didn’t grow up in an evangelical atmosphere that really encouraged questions, though.

I grew up Nazarene and Methodist. That [fear of questions is] not specific to my environment, but the evangelical world as a whole. I think questions scare people. It’s easier for us to move through our lives comfortably if we can define God, but God tells us in the Old Testament that “I am.” There’s a mystery to that. People get really uncomfortable when we can’t answer that question. But when I do ask that question, those are the times that I grow spiritually. We tend to have this wrong idea that we’ll progress spiritually only when we get answers to those questions. But it’s the asking that brings the spiritual progress.

What’s the role of other people in the life of the holy nomad?

The most challenging section for me to write was the section on community, this idea that to be truly nomadic you cannot journey alone.

That seems ironic.

Yeah. Our culture’s perception comes from Hollywood, some guy wandering off alone in the desert. But I’ve had my world transformed. I think that I’m learning that community means my neighborhood, and that it means the people I maybe don’t like so much, and I’m learning to ask what I can do for this person and what I can give to my church.

We really do live in this “don’t ask, don’t tell” spirituality culture. But we need people ahead of us on the trail who have been there and tell us what to do.