Lyz Lenz Talks GOD LAND at Prairie Lights

This past Friday, I laughed hard and thought hard at Prairie Lights. I was part of an enthralled inter-generational crowd listening to Lyz Lenz discuss her debut book, God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America.

The book combines the personal and the political. Lenz analyzes the cultural work performed by Midwestern (Protestant) churches as she depicts her personal quest for a church home. She discusses the dwindling of small-town churches alongside her own losses, most notably the end of her marriage to Christian man who voted for Trump.

Interestingly, Lenz started work on her book long before Trump was elected—maybe even running. This fact—and her analysis of white privilege in (mega)churches—are two more bits of evidence that we white liberals should have seen him coming.

Her book is not just about her or the Midwest or churches. It’s also about our nation.

At Prairie Lights, Lenz was interviewed by her friend Kerry Howley, Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. As Howley introduced Lenz, she noted that God Land seems episodic at first, but then surprisingly reveals itself as a quest narrative with a destination. That destination for Lenz is a progressive Lutheran church where she can live out her inclusive values and be treated as an intelligent and worthy human being.

Yet there is another destination not quite reached, an America that makes all of us feel like that Lutheran church makes Lenz feel.

At the reading, Lenz asked, “How do we exist with people we find morally repugnant?” One of her answers seems to be that we acknowledge each other’s complexity. She said she tried to depict all the people in her book with nuance. She certainly depicts this painful fact about some Midwesterners: they will condemn you AND bring you a casserole. Or as she writes, “we will give the shirt off of our back for someone in need, and then vote against hem at the ballot box.”

Lenz’s book helped me see my home, rural Iowa, as a midway place, a both/and place, a place struggling with loss and transition.

Lenz also made the point, both at her event and in her book, that there is no quick, easy answer to how we Americans move forward. At Prairie Lights, she said, “You have to sit with the mess.” In her lovely final chapter, she celebrates Holy Saturday, dwelling between death and resurrection. “A day of dwelling in that divide.”

 At Prairie Lights, Lenz herself dwelt between the serious and the hilarious.

Take, for instance, the moment when Howley mentioned the fact that she (like yours truly) was raised Catholic and that it helped forge her contrarian personality. Lenz brought up transubstantiation, noting that wars had been fought about it. Then she said that everyone seeks mystery, something like alchemy or transubstantiation—everyone wants to take something and turn it into something else. We all want to believe in transformation.

But then this talk of transformation sparked a darkly humorous story that she includes in her book:

I was obsessively watching a TV show called Santa Clarita Diet, where Drew Barrymore plays one half of a husband and wife realtor team who accidentally turns into a flesh-eating zombie. Her husband, played by Timothy Olyphant, reacts to her human-eating habit with love and support. I know it is a fictional television show, but I would find myself on Saturday nights watching, laughing, and eventually crying. It was fair that Drew Barrymore could be loved and supported while she ate people, but being a Lutheran broke up my marriage.

There was also a protracted tongue-in-cheek discussion of “sexy Jesus.” Reader, trust me, that is one search term you do NOT want to google.

Lenz read a bit from her book, an excerpt from the Guardian, titled “You can have a church or be a free woman, but having both is a struggle.” Not pithy, but oh so true.

This headline—and Lenz’s book and event—set me to thinking about my own religious journey. I was raised in a very conservative Catholic family. I went to a fairly liberal all-women’s Catholic college where I quit regularly attending Mass. For 26 years, I’ve loved teaching at a university founded by a very liberal order of nuns. My feelings toward the Catholic church are, to put it mildly, complicated. For a time I attended an Open and Affirming UCC church, where I met and married my beloved partner. For a time, we attended an LGBT-friendly Episcopalian church.

But it has been nearly two decades since I’ve regularly attended a church.

Sometimes I miss it. Once, a few months ago, I tried a new church. I agreed with its values, but I didn’t like how intent it was on defining itself against other churches.

Maybe I’m too picky. I marvel at liberal nuns, like the Mercy sisters, who do so much good work within the patriarchal institutional Church. I marvel at Lenz’s attempt to create a church of her own. (Spoiler, it failed because many of the people in it turned out to be super sexist.).

One of my issues is this: I don’t simply need freedom to (freedom to be unapologetically myself); I also need freedom from (freedom from drama and dysfunction).

The world itself offers enough distractions that distance me from God. I don’t need squabbles over music and dogma and denomination. I sure don’t want to do battle over Jesus.

All this is to say that Lenz’s book and her reading helped me realize that I am no longer midway in my religious journey. I’m done. I’ve been done for a good long while. I’m a determined person; if I had really wanted to find a new church, I would have done it long ago.

This is not to say that I’m done growing or seeking God. But I’m done seeking a church home. I already have a spiritual home among my friends and books. That is where I find mystery and belonging and transformation. There in a gathering at Prairie Lights.

As I was waiting for Lenz’s event to start, two women invited me to spiritual gatherings. One told me about a small Catholic group led by a woman priest. For a moment my soul leapt up, and I took down the information. But after I looked at the church’s web site, complete with bulletins and budgets, my excitement faded. Instead, I’m taking the other woman’s invitation. I plan to attend an event that my friend the poet Carol Tyx is leading at Prairewoods this Tuesday, September 10. It’s a birthday celebration for the recently deceased Mary Oliver and a meditation on her poetry.  

Every morning, I read one of the poems from Oliver’s final collection, Devotions. They feed me. They bring me closer to God. (Look for a blog post when I’m finished.)

In the final chapter of God Land, Lenz talks with a farmer about a biblical seed metaphor. This conversation reminds me of something my partner’s uncle once said about the Midwest: “Everyone here is so rooted.” I wasn’t quite sure how he, an Englishman who has lived and worked all over the world, meant it. Did he mean that we are stubborn and insular, too sure of ourselves and resistant to change? Or did he mean that we were solid, strong, secure? Maybe he meant all of that. Maybe all of that is true of me.

Now I aim to accept it. To embrace what Lenz calls “dissonance.” I aim to make the most of where I am. This moment, this place. Rooted. A plant, after all, needs strong roots in order to grow.