Reading the Dry Bones

 By Kelly McWilliams

 Reading the Dry Bones

In the book of Ezekiel, the great prophet dreams of a valley of dry bones.

Dry, very dry. Old skeletons near to dust.

God asks, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

Ezekiel knows they can’t. But when God orders him to prophesy to the bones, he does as he’s told. With a great rattling and shaking the bones connect one to another. In the valley, the breath of life comes into them. They rise.

The valley of the dry bones is a metaphor for the people of Israel, who feel their faith has dried up, their hope perished. Their religion doesn’t serve them anymore. It isn’t enough. Times have changed and the old conceptions of God are dusty, useless. They have suffered enormously. In a very real way, their faith has died.

But the role of Ezekiel — of any prophet — is to breathe new life into old words. Doing so, he proves that faith isn’t a stolid, unchanging thing. It is constantly renewed. 

I wish I’d known this as a teenager, when I began to believe that Christianity was too riddled with misogyny and hate to be any kind of home. I wish I’d understood that the challenge of faith is separate from breath from dry bones, the living truth from the dust of tired old lies.

Well, I didn’t know. I sheltered in art and books (all secular), telling myself I didn’t need the faith I really craved. I wasn’t alone in this. Many of my peers in young adulthood and beyond found secular life less perilous than its alternative. Faith was conservatism, to us. Often homophobic, sexist, racist. We’d just gotten the internet and it was a brave new world. We were moving forwards. Why would we glance back at all that heaped, time-forgotten dust?

But a lack of faith can mean great loneliness. It is a painful compromise, to realize you don’t agree with what an ancient religion has come to stand for, the ways it has been twisted to oppressive ends. It took me many years to learn that you don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater, or the religion with its problematic expressions.  In my 20s, a period of searching, seeking roots and stable ground.  I looked to the past

I am biracial. My black ancestors found Christianity at the same time they continued to practice, and keep alive, a spiritual voodoo. My great-grandmother had second sight, but she also loved her colorful church hats, the God of her friends and neighbors. If she found contradiction in this, she learned to embrace it. To enjoy community, however imperfect, and to tweak and select snatches of faith to sew into one shimmering whole cloth.

What I wish I’d known as a teenager is this: we don’t have to accept the dry bones, because we all possess the breath of life. We are the makers of our faith, and faith itself exists to be reinterpreted, resurrected, and reformed. In that way, it’s like any old story. It is fashioned of enduring archetypes — another kind of skeleton — so that it can be revived, again and again, in new incarnations

I recently completed a young adult book, called Agnes at the End of the World (coming out in Summer 2020), about a girl struggling to find and nurture the seed of truth she has always sensed exists inside her oppressive faith. The fundamentalist cult in which she was raised is a crystallization, for me, of all that is hateful about historical Christian practices: crushing misogyny, and a doctrine of rigid, self-righteous exclusion. And yet — and yet! — she has the Bible to read, and a mind of her own with which to interpret it. She will rescue the loving God that calls to her, and leave the rest.

Her journey represents a spiritual rite of passage I don’t often see reflected in young adult literature. Yet teenagers naturally grow up to find fault with the systems that have raised them. Yes, there are hateful aspects in any religion, but that doesn’t mean the only answer is to throw the whole thing out. You can find the beauty buried in dust, and bring it to life in whatever way makes life meaningful — and indeed, worthwhile — for you.

Writing about faith re-illuminated for me the beauty I’ve always craved from religion, and the complexities, too. But the truth is, I haven’t settled on a church for my family, which now contains two adults and one impressionable two-year old. We recently embarked on a church exploratory campaign, in which we attend a different house of worship every Sunday. (It helps that we live in Colorado Springs, where there is a church per block — no exaggeration.) We haven’t settled on one yet, but I remain hopeful. 

It’s the work of a lifetime, and I can’t wait to see how my daughter’s generation will reimagine the most ancient of stories. I like to think that one day soon we will see more congregations that entirely reject every trace of misogyny, racism, and homophobia — the very social ills that push away so many. I like to dream that in this way, faith comes roaring back to life. 

A note about Kelly McWilliams 

by Padma Venkatraman 

I first came across Kelly McWilliams's work when I was judging the mentoring contest for We Need Diverse Books. She was one of the wonderfully talented authors whose work I loved but whom I didn't end up mentoring officially, because I created a short list of 5 whose works I loved and then I picked the "winning" name out of a hat - they were all that good and I wanted to mentor them all. 

I did end up writing to the other four to let them know how much I wanted to support them as well, in whatever way I could. One of the four I reached out to didn't bother to respond; the others were delighted I'd taken the time to write and let them know I was there for them (which wasn't expected of us, of course). Kelly was one of those talented others.

Since that time, we've stayed in touch, and it was my pleasure to write in support of a writing residency application for her a few years back. And now, I'm delighted to be able to showcase her essay. 

Ending this summer of SAILing into unknown waters with the work of an up and coming author is, I think, most fitting. Because, after all, this summer I've been privileged to share the work of brilliant authors who have bravely shared their views on faith. And I have faith in Kelly, and I look forward to seeing her books on the shelf, someday soon. So here's to the future.

For those of your interested in this topic, I pitched a panel idea (vetted and submitted by Sarah Aronson who also identified a moderator, Aliza Werner) that NCTE accepted this fall - and I'll be speaking together with authors Sarah Aronson, Aisha Saeed, Christine Hepperman, Megan Atwood and Aliza Werner on this topic. The panel is Sat 23 Nov 2:45-4:00 p.m. Location 326 and it's called: Sparking Thought without Starting an Inferno: Daring to Explore Potentially Explosive Questions of Faith, Spirituality, Religious Tradition, and Philosophical Diversity in Books for Young People. 

Or, if you'll be at AWP in Spring 2020, visit Ann Kordhal's panel on this topic. I'm hoping she and other participating on that panel will contribute next summer to this blog.

For now, thanks everyone for reading and supporting our voyage this summer. I hope to SAIL with you again next summer. And in the meantime, if you're part of the Global Read Aloud project and are reading THE BRIDGE HOME, or would just like to have more information on my work, please visit my author website: www.padmavenkatraman.com