Faith and art have coexisted peacefully, even amicably, throughout most of history. In our day, however, relations between the realm of religion and the realm of literature are uneasy at best. As our contributors here suggest, the fault may lie with both sides-in the deafness of most contemporary writers to the religious yearnings of the average person; and in the aggressive intolerance of some believers who have gone the way of fundamentalism.
When I'm not teaching or writing, I work at the inpatient unit of St. Anthony's Hospice in Amarillo, Texas. It's a serious place. But not only serious: it's a house that contains everything, including laughter, comedy, farce, pettiness, terror, and peace, truly a house where, as Philip Larkin observed of churches, "all our compulsions meet."
One afternoon at the hospice, I was summoned to a patient's room to straighten out a lifting apparatus-one of those hanging hand pulls or grab bars, that are supposed to dangle over a patient's bed. The patient, an old man, was unable to speak, struggling to breathe, but still trying to communicate; he kept pointing overhead. The young woman tending him, his granddaughter, thought the device was what he wanted. He was obviously too weak to use it, but he was pointing directly overhead, and all we could see directly overhead was the triangular hand pull knotted up in its chain. So I struggled for long minutes, intensely, absurdly, with that chain.