Dawn Eden - Sunday Will Never Be the Same: A Rock & Roll Journalist Opens Her Ears to God

EMILY: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live itevery, every minute?

STAGE MANAGER: No. Saints and poets maybethey do some.

Thornton Wilder, Our Town

I dont recommend living in a fantasy world, but there were times during my college years when a good daydream was the only thing preventing me from jumping off the roof. Well, that and the thought that my last breath would be taken atop a pile of discarded beer cans, cigarette stubs, and condoms in the narrow crevice separating my New York University dormitory from the building next door.

The fantasy I have in mind began with me walking along University Place, just down the block from where I lived, and finding myself face-to-face with a strange yet familiar figure: my older self.

Mature Dawn had mysteriously transported back from fifteen or twenty years in the future. Unlike my college-age self, she was thin and she looked natural, not overly made up. (If I were grading myself on prophecy, I would give myself fifty percent.) I imagined her walking with me as a wise, motherly best friend. She told me that there were good things ahead for me, so I needed to buck up and get on with the business of living.

I mention this because in writing this book, as I faced the challenge of tracing the threads of grace connecting my spiritual journey from Judaism to agnosticism, Protestantism, and finally to Catholicism, I found myself once more fantasizing about the Dawn of the future.

This time, I envisioned myself in a care facility, having lost some of my memory through age-related illness or a debilitating accident. With that mental picture in place, a question took possession of my imagination: If some kind visitor were to attempt to remind me of who I was and what my life had been like, what could he say that would restore my self-understanding?

As I contemplated this scenario, with lots of environmental details that I wont bore you with (even my older self is thinner than I am), it seemed to me that the best way to tell my story would be not to tell it at allat least, not in the usual manner of and then I did this, etc. Rather, I needed to show it. I needed to show how God worked through my experienceseven through my ignorance, my mistakes, and my sinsto draw me into a closer relationship with him. And the best way to do that would be to capture my feelings and reactions as they happened, in the present tense.

Granted, the unfiltered, you are there approach has its drawbacks. Because the focus is upon a particular slice of time in my spiritual history, the impressions that come through of other people capture only how they appeared to me at that particular moment. At various points, a slice of time reveals that I made a negative judgment upon an individualsometimes even a member of my family. But there are layers above and below the particular stratum that is brought to light here and now. The story continues.

The approach also means there are inevitably going to be some loose ends. I have worked to ensure that, apart from the fact that my own happy ending is still in progressand will be as long as I am on this side of heavenall the major plot threads in this book are resolved. If some minor threads stick out, so be it. I would rather take that risk than knit my story together so tightly that there is no room for the Holy Spirit to act upon readers minds and hearts. I pray that the same Spirit will use this book as an instrument to reach you with the divine love that has given me healing and hope.