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Interview PW: Practicing Resurrection has a really long subtitle: “A
Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moment of Grace.” In a word, what’s the book about? Nora
Gallagher: Discernment. It’s the story of a woman at a
crossroads, discerning what to do and how to live after her brother’s death. A
death forces us to look at our lives. Examining a possible call to priesthood
and my vocation as a writer, as well as exploring the natural world for
profound meaning—all were related to Kit’s death. And,
as Bill McKibben and Annie Dillard pointed out, it’s also a love story. One of the things I was discerning
was the state of my marriage. It’s an honest—even grueling—description of what
Vincent and I went through. PW: You
write that in the midst of your decision-making, you felt “called” to
priesthood. Did you hear a voice? NG: No. It would have been much easier if I had. I felt a sort
of odd tugging, and a longing, and a singing joy when I was near the Eucharist
table. I discovered I loved preaching. I think “call” is not about something
weird or hearing voices, although there are people who say they have heard
them. I think it’s more about a long, slow recovery of whispers and glimpses,
early desires, a discovery of the place, as Frederick Buechner
said, where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need. It’s a growing
attentiveness to things of a different order that I think are always present,
but not always heard. PW: What
can a priest do that a layperson can’t? NG: Very few things, as it turns out. But in the church we’ve
translated that into a hierarchy where laypersons are often treated as children
and priests as “fathers.” One of the points of my book is a call to reexamine
these roles, and these relationships, in order to revitalize the church. PW: You
use the word “resurrection” a lot. What do you mean by this? NG: Discernment is always about finding new life. Let me back
up a bit: Just after someone has died, many people have the experience that the
person is alive, somewhere. We’ve made this into “woo-woo” or a “belief.” But what if, like the resurrection
appearances of Jesus, this sense that someone is alive is about seeing a
broader, deeper— eternal, if you will—life, briefly and intensely visible? If
there is some kind of life after death, what if it’s not a life exclusively for
the dead? What if it’s a life available to us all, something the living can
participate in, too? If we have a sense of this larger, newer, eternal life
going on around us while we’re still alive, it changes us. It makes us braver. PW: Your earlier memoir,
Things Seen and
Unseen, is also about your involvement with Trinity Episcopal Church.
Is your new book volume 2? NG: It takes place in the next three years after _Things Seen
ended,_ so it continues the story of that book. But it takes a new
direction—people have said it’s more personal—and it stands on its own. PW: Are
you writing another memoir about Trinity? NG: Not yet. I’m writing a novel about a woman living in New
Mexico in the spring of 1945. (I grew up in New Mexico, but the story is set
before I was born.) I might add that this character finds herself visiting the
small churches and _sanctuarios_ in the north of the state and
gradually asks herself questions about deep reality. —LaVonne Neff |