Buddhist<\/a>, and one a Catholic. How did this uncertainty shape you as a person of faith?<\/strong><\/p>\nFoundationally, I suspect. If I were a character in a novel, talking a lot about the uncertainty at the heart of my faith life, the early childhood experiences of a mixed religion household and divorce would make a credible back story. The world of my home began as place of irreconcilable differences. I learned the behavior of trust from my parents, but this trust always meant believing in two people who didn\u2019t agree on matters heavenly and earthly. \u00a0Trusting them meant living in tension. Looking back, I think I made peace with this tension. As an adult, when I\u2019ve had my moments of doubting God\u2019s existence or wondering whether any of the stuff said about God really corresponds to something out there, I haven\u2019t felt an overwhelming need to get hold of final answers. You might say I\u2019m at peace with my doubts\u2014with the tension between belief and unbelief in my faith. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t struggle, but that I feel at home in the struggle.<\/p>\n
Your story proposes that faith is gleaned in the shattered pieces of our lives. What do the fragments offer us as people of faith?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe fragments are really all we have. None of us sees back to the point where nothing became something or into the future as far as it goes. We don\u2019t even see everything that\u2019s right before us. When my son comes home from school, he might give me a few words as to how his day went, but that\u2019s often all I get. I have to work with what I have. No one sees the whole. We struggle to make sense of this world we live in having only part of the picture.<\/p>\n
The fragmentation of my own life reminds me of this condition, of my limits, and of the possibility that through these pieces I may glean something of the full reality that passes all understanding. In a sense, living by faith means living according to the stories we tell after putting together the fragments of our lives into something new. Religions tell grand stories \u00a0Families tell smaller tales, but they\u2019re no less important for that.<\/p>\n
The death of your daughter, Vivian, hours after she was born led you to write: \u201cLove is not constrained by time.\u201d Can you say a bit more about that?\u00a0 What did you learn about love in the 15 hours of Vivian\u2019s life with you?<\/strong><\/p>\nThese were words a friend wrote to me after I announced our daughter\u2019s fatal condition. We didn\u2019t know how much of a life outside the womb, if any, she would have. We didn\u2019t know if we would even meet her, so to speak. As we approached Vivian\u2019s day of birth, my deepest hope was that I could give to her a lifetime of love, a love unconstrained by time, in however much time we had with her. It is my hope now that I was able to do this as I held her, talked to her, helped tend to her needs, and watched as friends and family did the same.\u00a0 Whether or not I gave all the love I could, I believe that love truly has no time constraints and that love flows in all its fullness in every moment as much as it does over the course of a long life.<\/p>\n
You have a beautiful chapter in your book about love, where you say this: \u201cOnly those who love can be tragically destroyed, but then, only those who love can joyously live.\u201d How has love \u2013 given and received \u2013 shaped your identity as Christian?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Christian story appeals to me because it\u2019s a love story that embodies the crosses and triumphs of love that I\u2019ve personally experienced. And it\u2019s a comedy, in Dante\u2019s sense, which I guess makes the Gospel a RomCom of sorts.\u00a0 I dig those.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t go to the Gospel because it explains where we came from or where we\u2019re going. I go to it because it calls me away from the indifference and selfishness to which I\u2019m too much prone. It calls me to make sense of my life in the context of the love life of love itself\u2014and to take this meaningfulness and live it as best I can.<\/p>\n
What spiritual practices have sustained you \u2013 and continue to sustain you \u2013 on your faith journey?<\/strong><\/p>\nCommunity sustains my faith, maybe more than anything else. When I\u2019m alone, even in prayer, I don\u2019t feel especially close to God. I feel more filled with faith when I\u2019m with people that I care about, especially when I need to be there for someone, but also when I\u2019m just there. Reading bedtime stories to my daughter, playing video games of Lego sets with my son, watching The Colbert Report<\/em> with my wife\u2014these small moments of simple company are sacred to me.<\/p>\nWhat was the hardest thing about writing this book?\u00a0 And the most life-giving?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe hardest thing?\u00a0 I\u2019d say telling my story in a way that can speak to others. I\u2019m grateful that I had excellent editors who were able to take my drafts and the completed story and make it into something better.<\/p>\n
I found that writing about Vivian, telling her story, short though it was, was the most life-giving. It was my attempt to breathe a new life into her, to make her real to others, to keep her real to me, and to keep my devotion to her alive.<\/p>\n
Who do you hope reads this book?\u00a0 And what, ultimately, do you hope they take away from it?<\/strong><\/p>\nI wrote it especially for people of faith who wonder if their doubts and uncertainties mean that they should give up the journey. I hope that anyone who reads this story receives some sense that uncertainty isn\u2019t the enemy of faith, but its friend, its sibling even. There\u2019s tension, as there is in any relationship, but isn\u2019t not a tension that necessarily needs to be massaged or taken away.<\/p>\n
To read an excerpt from Living by Faith, Dwelling in Doubt<\/em>, visit the Patheos Book Club here.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I could hardly contain my tears while reading Kyle Cupp\u2019s new book, Living by Faith, Dwelling in Doubt. His story of the pain of a broken childhood and the loss of a newborn daughter in early fatherhood was shared with so much tenderness, honesty, and aching love, it was almost too much to bear. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":3704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/54\/2013\/10\/BC_LivingbyFaith_1.jpg\" "\\"BC_LivingbyFaith_1\\"")
<\/a>I could hardly contain my tears while reading Kyle Cupp\u2019s new book, Living by Faith, Dwelling in Doubt.<\/em><\/a> His story of the pain of a broken childhood and the loss of a newborn daughter in early fatherhood was shared with so much tenderness, honesty, and aching love, it was almost too much to bear. But I did bear it and am glad, because Kyle\u2019s responses to his heartbreak also held beauty and nourishment for my soul, as he passionately struggles to craft meaning of a life fraught with loss and grief. Cupp reminds us that faith is formed from the broken shards of our lives, and with deep doubt as a regular companion.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/54\/2013\/10\/cupp.jpg\" "\\"cupp\\"")
<\/a>I wanted to share my story as an example of what an uncertain faith can look like. I know there are people of faith who have struggled, as I have, with uncertainties, hardships, and questions that never really go away or find satisfying resolution. In a lot of faith circles, we\u2019re told that doubting is the mark of a weak faith and that maybe it\u2019s okay to have moments of doubt, but you better get back to the strength of surety as soon as you can. Well, if there\u2019s a key to unlocking that door, I haven\u2019t found it. And if it exists, it\u2019s not for me. I\u2019ve gotten the sense that it\u2019s not for everyone.<\/p>\n