In Each Angel Burns (the title comes from a line in Ranier Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies) I created three characters in their early fifties all struggling with their shifting passions. Gabe is a faithful husband, loving father, and accomplished craftsman. Maggie is an accomplished artist who escaped into fantasy through the years of an abusive marriage. Peter is a devout priest, brilliant thinker, and elusive mystic. All of them approach their lives with an intensity of passion but sometimes those passions go off course causing them personal anguish and also personal awareness of their love for one another.
This is hard for some readers to process. Because so many fundamentalist religions demand strict adherence to rules without acknowledgement of human passions, the passionate natures of these three characters seems incongruous. I have been told that the strong sexual themes conflict with the strong spiritual themes but I, like Freud, believe those passions are the same thing, the same energy, just directed differently. I am always pleased to hear from readers of Each Angel Burns. Their reactions vary greatly and passionately.
This blog post is part of the April 2012 A-to-Z Blogging Challenge. Thanks for visiting.
5 comments:
Wow, this sounds so great, so interesting! I'd love to read it someday and see what I think of it! I think it sounds great and this post was really interesting :)
Nikki – inspire nordic
Hi! Stopping by for the A to Z challenge. I agree with you about the connection btwn sexuality and spirituality. The fact that many in religious circles shun sexual issues or demonize them, especially in regards to women, is pretty telling.
There's a book out now in Evangelical Christian circles that's getting a lot of attention for frank sexual discussion - written by a pastor and his wife. However, the bigger issue isn't that a pastor and his wife have sex and write about it in a book, but that he felt the need to publicly shame his wife for her sexual behavior prior to their marriage - prior to either of them even committing to their faith.
Anyway... I think us folks of faith, whatever faith it may be, need to be less scared of passion and not be so quick to judge art that pushes those concepts to their limits. So, good job fighting the good fight!
Thank you both.
Stephsco, I have been stupefied lately by some of the sick stuff I have been reading out that is published under the guise of "Christian literature." I recently read about a writer named Leah Kelley who writes so-called Christian Domestic Discipline Fiction and Nonfiction. I've only read the excerpts posted on Amazon but it is the sickest, most perverted crap I've ever encountered. It is page after page of men beating the crap out of women and the women being grateful for it. Her readers believe it is peachy keen for men to beat women but call my book scandalous for depicting loving, intimate sexuality.
Crazy, sick people.
That sounds like a very interesting book. Sex is usually one of those topics that is not really mentioned in Christian literature and never talked about. As one waiting for marriage, I can see why, but I think we still need to be able to read about it from other perspectives. :)
This book was excellent. It was able to draw me in from page one, yet kept me enthralled and interested in the story throughout the book for multiple reasons. It was weird because I would call the book a noir/romance/mystery...very unusual book..it isn't your normal type of book to be "cookie cuttered" into a genre.
Post a Comment