Famished<\/em>.<\/p>\nStripped in the context of the book connotes being stripped down: emotionally, spiritually. \u201cHe who loses his life for may sake will find it\u201d\u2026Many of us claim to \u00a0follow Christ, but almost never will you find a person who has voluntarily taken on ANY kind of poverty: whether financial, emotional, social. Almost as rare is the person who\u2019s become \u201cpoor\u201d in some way in spite of themselves and who sees the poverty as a sign of favor, an opportunity.<\/p>\n
Sickness of any kind is its own form of poverty. It so happened I\u2019d also had the poverty of alcoholism\u2014I\u2019ve been sober 28 years now but I\u2019ll still die an alcoholic. I\u2019m an introvert in an extrovert culture. I\u2019m a Catholic writer in a mainstream literary culture that tends to view belief in God as imbecilic. I\u2019m single\u2014which as a Catholic is to say celibate\u2014and childless. I got a divorce and had my marriage annulled in the wake of my cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t see my cancer a blessing\u2014please!\u2014but I did see it as a mystery. To consent to live in mystery, not to know all the answers, is another kind of poverty. The world sees any kind of poverty as cause for ridicule. Loser!<\/p>\n
But Christ\u2019s kingdom is not of this world. Even in the worst of my drinking days, I was always engaged, curious. No virtue of mine but my heart never hardened. I was corrupt and I did corrupt things but my heart didn\u2019t harden. Because of that, the longer I stayed sober, up to and through my cancer, I began to see my various kinds of poverty\u2014and we are all <\/em>poor\u2014as my crown in a way, as the way to Christ.<\/p>\nAs a Protestant reading your memoir, I was captivated by your writing about\u00a0the Catholic faith \u2014 be it the\u00a0evocative descriptions of the Eucharist and the Mass, or\u00a0the intimate details of your prayer life, to your frank conversations with a recovering alcoholic priest. You write about your faith in a way I don\u2019t see many others doing. How did you fall so in love with Catholicism and what do you find most compelling about it?<\/strong><\/p>\nI didn\u2019t fall in love with Catholicism: I fell in love with Christ. That\u2019s a dangerous proposition.<\/p>\n
My memoir Redeemed<\/em> tells the story of my conversion. In brief, I was newly sober, newly married, working as a lawyer in Beverly Hills. And with no theological grounding whatever, I saw, re the lawyerdom, that the emperor has no clothes. The whole system of power, property, prestige on which politics, legal systems, armies, governments are run is built on sand. Those systems are by their nature false, and therefore eventually bound to fail, because whatever else they may claim to be about, they\u2019re really about amassing power and money. They\u2019re giant PR scams. We all blindly, obediently go along with them.<\/p>\nNo-one knew that better than Christ. The truth abides in an entirely different realm and is most accessible to humble, simple people. That doesn\u2019t necessarily exclude the rich or well-educated. But recently, for example, I heard a homeless person, a guy from the street with his entire worldly belongings in a paper bag, speak the kind of truth that interests me. He said, \u201cI\u2019m so so grateful. I\u2019ve been sober 30 days. This is beautiful. Thank you. This is better than I deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is better than I deserve<\/em>. From a homeless person! When\u2019s the last time we heard a politician or a judge or a five-star general or someone shrilly lobbying for yet another \u201cright\u201d say: This is better than I deserve? That homeless guy had the keys to the kingdom that Christ gives to the child-like, to the pure at heart. That\u2019s not something you can learn in a theology class, however useful a theology class, or a law school degree for that matter, might be. You are certainly not going to learn it from any kind of mainstream American celebrity-obsessed, money-craving, violence-saturated culture. And that was what I was after. The truth at the heart of the world.<\/p>\nI found it in the Gospels. The notion of redemptive suffering. The crucifixion and resurrection I\u2019d experienced in my own life. I\u2019d already had to die to my identity as an alcoholic. I\u2019d already in a sense been born again\u2014born into gratitude, into wonder, into an intense desire for meaning and connection and to give all of myself.<\/p>\n
I was in a profession that is based on lying. In the adversarial system of law, an attorney is compelled<\/em> to \u201cshade the truth.\u201d You\u2019re compelled to hide your own client\u2019s information, to omit, to manipulate facts. I was in civil litigation but that\u2019s true of both civil and criminal. In criminal you have the added egregiously skewed imposition of draconian punishment and incarceration on the poor.<\/p>\nAnd along comes Christ who says: \u201cSay yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. Anything else is from the evil one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, this is bracing stuff, working as a Beverly Hills lawyer, or anytime, anywhere. Christ\u2019s teachings are hard, but they\u2019re not impossible. Narrow is the gate and few will find it. But the gate is open! To everyone!<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t interested in secularism with good intentions, which is what tends to pass for religion in our culture. I\u2019d always<\/em> had good intentions: to love, to be loved. With good intentions, while drinking I\u2019d slept with married men, had three abortions, squandered every gift I\u2019d ever been given. That I was, and remain, a terrible sinner by the way was a great gift. My sins taught me the limitations of intelligence backed by will power, which is the god of our culture. I had tons of intelligence: I\u2019d graduated from law school with honors in the throes of acute alcoholism. I had tons of will power: I\u2019d passed the bar exams in three different states on the first try. Good intentions weren\u2019t going to give me enough courage to quit my job as a lawyer and follow the call of my heart to write. Intelligence alone, backed by will power alone, wasn\u2019t going to take me to the meaning, the Person, at the heart of the world.<\/p>\nI needed supernatural help. I needed the Body and Blood of Christ. I didn\u2019t shop around for a religion: \u201cEeny, meeny, miney, mo, I like the candles and incense, let\u2019s choose THIS ONE!\u201d I never ever thought Let me choose the religion that will make me look good or feel good.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t choose<\/em> at all. It chose me. I thirsted, I quested, I pondered, I read, I went around to a bunch of different churches. I read the Gospels. I saw the Gospels were living water, and Christ called me. There is nothing \u201clike\u2019\u201d Catholicism. There was no question whatsoever of a \u201cpreference,\u201d or a weighing, or this religion has this that I like and that one has that that I like. Either God took on human flesh, came to earth and pitched his tent among us, was crucified, died, buried and rose again and left us his Real Body and Real Blood or he didn\u2019t. Either Jesus is who he said he was or there is no reason to live. There\u2019s no middle ground. The stakes are life and death. That appealed to me immensely. The medieval romance: a perilous journey, necessarily undertaken alone, the risk, the quest for the Holy Grail. The fact that we don\u2019t know how it will turn out. You have to be open to the surprise ending. You have to live your whole life in crazy, wild-card faith, in a world that has no conception whatsoever that the quest even exists, much less that you\u2019ve given your life to it.<\/p>\nYour faith was integral to your journey through the cancer diagnosis and treatment. Can you say a bit more about that, for those who have yet to read the book? \u00a0How did your faith accompany you in this journey?<\/strong><\/p>\nMy faith is integral to everything. Christ is the ground of my being. So he walked with me, accompanied me, as he does everywhere.<\/p>\n
Just briefly. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and I ended up going against medical advice and declining chemo, radiation, and a heavy-duty estrogen drug called Tamoxifen. I did a ton of research and a lot of praying, and I consulted friends and spiritual advisors I trust. And in the end, my inner sense was that those harsh treatments would do more harm than good for my Stage 1, Grade 1 cancer. So I had the tumor surgically removed, out-patient, and that was it. I just kept living my life the way I\u2019d been living it for years. And now fifteen more years have passed. I just turned 63. I don\u2019t eat crap but I\u2019m not obsessed with eating only organic. I adore gluten. I don\u2019t take pills of any kind, not even vitamins.<\/p>\n
But Stripped<\/em> is in no way an anti-medicine screed. It\u2019s an invitation to ask ourselves what Master we serve. That doesn\u2019t mean the choice is between Jesus and the doctors. No, no, no. The question is whether we\u2019re going to serve the master of fear or the Master of love. Do we have the courage to follow our own hearts over an authority figure: a doctor, a coach, a politician, a parent, a spouse, a friend, a religious or spiritual figure who may or may not be speaking with real authority? A culture that is increasingly based on the commodification of the human body, the human person?<\/p>\nIn the temple, Christ spoke \u201cwith authority.\u201d The only real authority is based on truth, beauty, love. I do feel if you hunger deeply enough, if you dare to ask the very deepest questions of the human heart, you will be led inexorably to Christ. There\u2019s no-where else to go. But you have to be willing to be sort of drastically out of step, to bear the tension of profound emotional and spiritual poverty without making a show of it.<\/p>\n
There are moments in the book where you provide very detailed information about what a doctor said to you about your cancer, or the unsympathetic way you were often treated by medical professionals. Was there a desire to share \u201cthe facts\u201d about breast cancer, as well as the lived experience of moving through a diagnosis and treatment with your readers? \u00a0What was behind that?<\/strong><\/p>\nNo, not really. I just wanted to be specific. The terminology of medicine, of cancer, is sort of naturally scary and creepy. We feel out of our league. We feel, Better leave this to the experts<\/em>. Which in one way is a very sound thought. In another way, however, doctors are not gods. They still don\u2019t know what causes cancer or what, if anything, cures it.<\/p>\nAnd as I say in the book if my days are going to be shorter than I\u2019d hoped, I want to spend as few of them as possible in a doctor\u2019s office. I would way rather be outside listening to the birds and watching the shadows on the sidewalk. Many of us are terrified of death because we\u2019ve never fully lived. The more fully and richly we live, the less inclined we are to cling to it at any cost.<\/p>\n
How did your faith life changed after your diagnosis?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThe way I order my day didn\u2019t change. I have a very simple, very solitary life. I pray every morning, write, answer correspondence, neaten and clean, take a walk, play the piano, ponder, listen to the birds, read.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m free to order my day pretty much as I like and in its way it\u2019s extremely stringent. There is very little \u201cfat\u201d in my day, in my life. I appear to the outside observer be doing next to nothing but really my inner life is like boot camp. Ongoing examen, ongoing praise, forever contemplating, making connections, \u201cworking\u201d in the best sense of the word. Alert, aware.<\/p>\n
One main thing that changed was I realized was that my true \u201cmarriage,\u201d my vocation, is writing and that I couldn\u2019t both write and participate in the Sacrament of an actual marriage.<\/p>\n
What did your cancer journey ultimately teach you about life, and death?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was an experience, an incarnational experience of Garden-in Gethsemane suffering. The paradox is that my life is ever more full of that sword-will-pierce-your-heart joy that only comes with being in love with something or someone that can\u2019t quite reciprocate in the way we long for. Christ chooses not to be available to us in the flesh\u2014but then again, he IS available in the Flesh, in the Eucharist.<\/p>\n
Then of course there are our fellow human beings\u2014they never love us in quite the way we hope either!<\/p>\n
And if we\u2019re very lucky, and suffer a lot because of this unrequited love for the world and its people, and if we refuse to let our longing turn into cynicism or resentment or self-pity or jealousy or despair, we begin to see\u2014Oh! This is Christ\u2019s stupendous gift to us. This blood that flows from our ever-hemorrhaging hearts is meant to heal us and to heal the world.<\/p>\n
What do you most hope to offer to your readers with Stripped?<\/strong><\/p>\nAn invitation to ask ever deeper questions about how we want to live, and how we want to die. An invitation to turn off our television sets, sit with the almost unendurable pain of our existential loneliness, and realize THAT IS WHY CHRIST CAME. We have a profound obligation to train ourselves to be able to discriminate between the true and the false. We\u2019re called to hold ourselves to the highest possible standard of coherent, consistent reasoning, ethics, and behavior.<\/p>\n
To follow Christ is an extreme sport: 24\/7 we\u2019re training. We\u2019re athletes in a sense, as St. Paul said. Our aim isn\u2019t to look good, to win in the worldly sense of power, property and prestige. It\u2019s to become fools for Christ.<\/p>\n
Read excerpts from Heather King\u2019s book, Stripped, at the Patheos Book Club here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI didn\u2019t see my cancer a blessing\u2014please!\u2014but I did see it as a mystery. To consent to live in mystery, not to know all the answers, is another kind of poverty. The world sees any kind of poverty as cause for ridicule. Loser! But Christ\u2019s kingdom is not of this world.\u201d \u2014 Heather King, author, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[350],"tags":[406,408,124,105,120,108,409],"class_list":["post-5034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-qa","tag-cancer","tag-catholic-convert","tag-catholicism","tag-christian-books","tag-healing","tag-spirituality","tag-stripped"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>\u201cI didn\u2019t see my cancer a blessing\u2014please!\u2014but I did see it as a mystery. To consent to live in mystery, not to know all the answers, is another kind of poverty. The world sees any kind of poverty as cause for ridicule. Loser! But Christ\u2019s kingdom is not of this world.\u201d \u2014 Heather King, author, Stripped<\/p><\/blockquote>\n