All Out of Faith...Filled up on faith

I have a new book...All Out of Faith... a collection of writings by Southern women chronicling how they have been shaped by religion. On the cover of the book is a folk art image of a church that I know in my soul. Named Pleasant Hill, a welcome mat at the door, children and dogs running around outside where the ladies are setting up dinner on the grounds, a cemetery on the other side, with peace doves scrabbling in the dirt by the welcome mat...it is a picture of all my first churches combined. Some of my favorite writers are included. Barbara Kingsolver and Vicki Covington are among them. And I have discovered some new voices that sing a song I know all the verses to.
A discovery like this reminds me why I love books and writing and reading. I had no idea that the long Saturday mornings I used to spend at the little Carnegie library in my hometown of Valdosta, Georgia was the beginning of a life long passion for words and ideas and books. I read and weep and laugh and recognize kindred souls, cousins twice removed, perhaps, whom I will never meet. Their words inspire or entertain or tick me off but always I respect the books that contain those words.
In my growing up home, books were everywhere. Stacked on headboards, lined up in the tiny hall bookcase, sitting on top of the piano in the living room... Anytime you wanted to read, there was a choice available. Like most rural Southerners of their time, my mama and daddy believed in education as a way to better yourself, your station in life.
Now there’s a phrase for you... your station in life. In my mind’s eye I see an image of small towns split in two by railroad tracks with a depot for arriving and departing. Folks come and go on the train to visit and return or to leave forever but the train keeps on running, to’ing and fro’ing. Books and the ideas in them have been my train to other places and to a new station in life.
Mama and daddy were right. Books are powerful life changing possibilities in between covers. For daddy they were his salvation growing up with an abusive father. Reading helped him slip away from the painful realities of his childhood. While he read, he was not there but far, far away. In mama’s home, reading was recreation with potboiler turn of the century novels in the upstairs lawyers bookcase. Mama still reads for fun as does her sister, my Aunt Peg for whom I am named. They swap books, mailing their latest reads to one another, sharing still in the wonder of the printed words.
I still have all my Bibles, the first book for most Southerners of my generation. They are a little tattered and worn, smoothed by regular reading, page turning and note taking. Bible note taking, usually done during sermons delivered by preachers, Bible study or Sunday School, was an art form for some folks. Colored pens, tiny writing, underlining and little symbols were used to help you remember what someone else thought those passages meant. Being Baptist, we never took anyone else’s word for what those words meant because we believed in the priesthood of the believer. My take on it was just as good as yours even if you did read Greek and had studied at one of those seminaries that turned out educated preachers. Baptists in my day were hard core little d democrats. They really believed the ground at the foot of the cross was level and nobody was going to tell them what to believe or how to do faith.
That attitude still lives in me now. Having been other than Baptist as an adult, I can appreciate what I learned in my little country churches now. I am responsible for my own salvation and for the soul train trips I take. Having lost most of my early understanding of faith in a single, cataclysmic event, my faith journey took an unexpected and unwanted detour that left me with not much in the way of words that describe what I believe. The one abiding truth that I retained from my Bible book reading is the unshakeable conviction that God is, God is Love and God loves me. Can’t explain it. Don’t have to. Just like God said, “I AM.” And I still read that first book of mine looking for all the clues to God’s goodness, searching for affirmation and meaning, exclaiming in wonder and awe and horror at all the stories in the narrative. It never fails to take me on another train trip, filling up my out of faith soul with faith once again.
So, here goes. I am off to a different stop on the train tracks of life. I think I will read again the story of the Wise Men and see if there is any light for my nearsighted faith eyes. Like them, I travel to find new Light under starlight from my past. Both hope and memory are my traveling companions as I live looking for the Love and Light that first made itself known to me long years ago in country churches filled with the People of God. Thank God for books that serve as road maps.