Who said memoir was dead?

A few years ago I started writing a memoir. I wrote a few chapters and thought they were decent, and so I put together a book proposal and took the proposal, along with a few of the chapters, to a writing conference. I tentatively gave it to a couple of acquisitions editors I know. One of the editors, before even reading the proposal, was very blunt. "Wow, memoir is on its way out. Unless you have a unique voice like Anne Lamott, it's really tough to get something published." Well, I knew I wasn't like Anne Lamott...so that pretty much quelched the inkling of confidence I had.

Needless to say I was discouraged. I put the manuscript away and haven't touched it since. I lost steam and any excitement I had for it -- I guess I get discouraged easily.

And I keep looking for signs that the memoir as a genre is dead. Low and behold, about 3 years after my editor friend was ready to give the last rites to memoir -- I see more and more on the bookstore shelves. I love memoirs. I always have -- even way back when they were called "autobiographies." That's why I wanted to write one: because I've always heard that you should write what you like to read.

I recently read two spiritual memoirs that I loved. One is a recommendation by, who else, Anne Lamott. I read in a magazine somewhere, in one of those columns that asks famous people what they're reading, that Lamott was reading a book called "Take This Bread" by Sara Miles. So I ran out and bought it.

It is, as the title suggests, all about food. She's a liberal, a journalist, activist and a lesbian. Okay, not your typical candidate for being drawn to Christianity. But one day she stumbles into an Episcopal church and is invited to take communion. Her life is instantly changed.

After her conversion, she takes Jesus literally when he says "If you love me, feed my sheep." She starts a food pantry at the Episcopal church, and eventually dozens of other food pantries around San Franscisco.

When I was younger, communion in the Baptist church was just an after thought. A ritual that was tacked onto a service once a month. Grape juice in little plastic thimble-sized cups and Saltines broken into little pieces. As I've experience communion in different churches and traditions throughout my adult life, it's become central to my worship experience. When my friends and I tried to start a little church a while back, we started a communion tradition where we would walk up to the communion table and say "I bring ______ to the table." Often, for me it would be "I bring anxiety to the table" or "I bring sadness to the table." The minister would break off a hunk of break (not a mere Saltine) then say, "Because of this bread, you can have peace and joy. Because if Christ's blood, you have new life."

This ritual was meant to remind us of the continual transforming power of Christ. Now, as David and I go to Old Saint Pats, we have communion every Sunday. We walk up the marble-floored aisle and hold out our hands as the priest says, "the body of Christ" or "The blood of Christ". Amen.

"Take this Bread" reminded me once again, of the centrality of communion to the Christian life....a constant and tangible reminder of our changed lives and the power of Christ in our lives.

"Easter Everywhere" by Darcey Steinke was waiting for me at Barnes and Noble the other day. It was a surprise from my husband. He called me and said "Hey, stop by the Barnes and Noble, I'm having them hold a book for you there." He wouldn't tell me what it was. But when I stopped to pick it up and read the back cover, I was once again grateful for a husband who "gets me."

I took the book home and read it in one day. I just have to say, it's one of the best spiritual memoirs I've read in a long time, and her voice is NOTHING LIKE ANNE LAMOTT! Take that, my editor friend. Memoir is not dead, and you don't have to be like Ann Lamott to publish one.

Anyway, Steinke grew up as the daughter of a Lutheran minister. But as she becomes an adult, she abandons the church. She moves to NYC and publishes novels, she's beautiful, successful and seems to have everything, but she feels empty. So she tentatively starts exploring the faith of her childhood. But this time she attempts to find out what it really means, which looks much different than the shallow faith she inherited from her minister father. She realizes that her looks, success, etc., will not fill her. She quotes Simone Weil: "One has only the choice between God and idolatry. If one denies God...one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them."

If you're looking to read books that have neat, tidy conversion stories that leave no unanswered questions, then you shouldn't buy these books. But if you're okay with conversions that are on-going, are more about questions than answers, but show how Christ meets someone where they are....you might like these books as much as I did.

Now I'm going to go work on my memoir.