My Journey to the Top

My husband Heinz and I met when I was 17 and he was 22. He had just come from Princeton to do a Ph.D. at Stanford. I was a freshman. He was a very striking man. I was quite dazzled by him. Fortunately, that turned out later to be mutual. Our child was discovered to have a very rare disease and was given just a few months to a few years to live. That was when he was 2; he died when he was 6. It was very difficult. My faith became very urgent and very essential. Soon after my son died, my husband was killed in an accident. By that time, we had two adopted children under the age of 3. I was suddenly widowed with two babies. My church provided a community to help me deal with these very difficult issues.

In my last book, I asked two questions. What is it about Christianity that I love in spite of many things I don't? And what is it I can't love about it? I don't love the claim that it's the only true religion, and I don't love the way that many sides of Christianity have been used to nurture hatred and dissension. But I do love the enormous range of stories, poems, chants and testimonies to the ways that people discover the human spirit and express that in relation to each other, in relation to communities. Finding spiritual meaning is essential. This is part of the way we imagine, we hope, we fear, the way we explore. We can't live without it.

Interviews for this package were conducted by Barbara Kantrowitz and Holly Peterson

© 2007