Mary Karr: Guided by Prayer

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I feel like I'm starting a new spiritual phase of my life right now. I've just found a new church and a new priest. I pray the rosary. I do a chaplet called the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. On the Our Father beads you pray, "Eternal Father, I offer you the body and blood, soul and divinity of your only son, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ in atonement for my own sins and those of the whole world." On the Hail Mary beads, you say, "For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world." It's a very quick little chaplet, you can say it in 15 minutes or so. Sometimes my mind is really at a scamper, I'll just whip it out.

I also try to just talk to God in the morning and ask for guidance about the day, and in the evening, do what they call an examination of conscience, where you ask yourself, what did I do today that brought me closer to God and what did I do that moved me further away?

What's your answer on a typical day?
Oh, I do a lot of stuff. I'm not a very good Christian. My nature is pretty selfish. I'm the kind of person who will take the last cookie. My mother was an only child and drank a fifth of vodka every day, and my dad also drank. Like I said, I have had a hard time feeling safe most of my life. But I have a sense of safety now much more often. My stress hormone levels have even gone down.

That's a good advertisement for religion.
What I say to people who say they don't believe in God is, "What does it cost you to pray for 30 days?" I encourage them to pray for 30 days and see if their life gets better--that's the only reason I did it. It's the only reason I stopped drinking, because somebody said if I did that, it might help. I haven't had a drink for about 16 years. It just took three minutes a day. When I first started praying, it was just, "Help me stay sober. Thanks."

Did you do those three minutes willingly?
No. I had my middle finger pointed at the sky 90 percent of the time. I'm not innately humble or obedient or any of that stuff that helps you participate in a religion wholeheartedly.

Why are you choosing now to come out to the world as religious?

Listen to Karr read a poem

If you look at my books, it's always been there. Robert Hass, who used to be [U.S.] poet laureate, was my teacher. When he introduced me recently at [the Univesrity of California at] Berkeley, he said "If you look back at the very first poems of Mary's, you see that she was always on a spiritual quest." I've written about when I was doing what I call "God-o-Rama," when I was really looking for a place to practice a faith. [My son and I] would go to zendos, or Baptist churches, Episcopalian, Jewish temples. But if you had told me I was going to wind up Catholic, I would have fallen over laughing.

So how did it happen that you chose Catholicism?
I was guided by the Holy Spirit. I can't say it any better than that.

A lot of things appeal to me about a lot of religions. I would have thought I was going to end up Episcopalian, but the fact that there wasn't a body on the cross was too subtle for me. And the carnality of the [Catholic] Church really drew me--that there is a body on the cross, that we are hunks of meat.

Your work demonstrates that appeal of the carnal--some of your poems are sexual metaphors for faith.
Yes, "Sinners Welcome," the title poem, certainly is. Everybody thinks it's about having sex, but it's about taking communion. Being entered by the God. I said, "He enters me and joy sprouts…" In any Christian church, communion is supposed to be about someone's passion. Someone lends you their passion, someone suffers for you. You take someone's suffering into your body, and you're transformed by it. It's such a great idea.

Why did you choose the title "Sinners Welcome" for your book?
At the church that I went to in Syracuse, there's a banner outside that says "Sinners Welcome" It's in the poorest part of Syracuse, where all half-way houses are, so about 20 to 30% of the parish is disabled, either physically or mentally. I always loved walking in under that banner. I used to think you had to be good to go to church.  You can go even if you haven't been to confession, if you haven't been absolved. Who needs it more than a sinner?