Customer Reviews

Faith, Interrupted: A Spiritual Journey

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Unless you personally know Eric Lax, his preacher father, Eric's friend Skip Packard or have memories involving Camp Stevens or remember your own personal struggles getting out of the Vietnam War, just skip to about page 190 of this 270 page book. There you will find more of the beginnings of a discussion about a person actually having their faith interrupted and the thought processes that helped them break out of the religious trance they had been steeped in from birth.

Page 250 has a nice listing of the reasons that he stands behind his dismissal of Christianity but waiting until page 250? Really? This book is 85% personal memoir and 15% discussion of why a person might reject Christianity. If you are looking for any Harris or Dawkins type of discussion, or an explanation of how a person who has fallen off the bandwagon now leads their life, you really won't find it here.

This guy has fallen off the bandwagon and sounds like he wishes he could get back on.

Had Eric Lax's book delivered an honest story about the faith journey of two baby boomers it could have been okay. The first quarter the reader endures a clinical recounting of the Lax family Sunday morning as Eric's father performs his duties as an Episcopal priest. The depersonalization is initially irritating, its persistent disengagement consequentially boring. The story begins as a caricature, like a sentimental scene of a boy going through dad's treasure drawer filled with Aggies and sports medals in order to understand the man. Lax's father is the keeper of the faith, something forever "out there" preserved in the amber of memory and the poetic language of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

Readers making it past this first quarter in the hope that Lax evolves will be disappointed. This is not a story of a seeker, exploring and internalizing faith through prayer, serving the poor, studying the Bible, or discovering the Divine in life experience. Rather than enter the noble struggle of doubt essential for true faith, Lax replaces his father with his college roommate, heaping the onus of explaining faith on to a surrogate. The vacuum of ownership for participating in his own faith journey is heightened by the fact that the roommate is a Vietnam combat veteran while Lax is a C.O. who spends the war years in a tropical paradise.

The division defining the boomer generation couldn't me made clearer. Is it the "me generation" as embodied by Lax waiting for someone to gift him with a boy's notion of faith? Or is this generation defined by the over 9 million who served in Vietnam, the reality of warfare affecting exponentially families and friends, work, health, and yes - faith - through the dark night of the soul? This is part of the national psyche, a rending that doesn't belong to Eric Lax alone. Yet he seems to be unaffected by the anguish around him. The book is about Lax asking "Where's MY faith?" He should have remembered from his childhood that the creed begins with "we" not "I".

As he sits at the feet of his former roommate, George Packard, waiting to get fed, you can't help but question the authenticity of a friendship in which one friend is locked into being the father figure, the next keeper. Putting Packard on a pedestal, making him two-dimensional, reiterating the childish nickname "Skip" trivializes a man whose complexity comes through despite Lax's lack of curiosity and compassion. After all, the journalist Christ Hedges, has profiled Packard with more insight in Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America. Lax's primary relationships remain unexamined. His wife makes a cameo appearance, and there is little mention of his own fatherhood or parenting; the latter potentially leading to a personal, ultimately healing maturation of his father's faith. He sits at his father's deathbed, meets a woman to love, has a baby and can't find God? Come on!

Instead he burdens his former roommate with the chore. No matter how sound the choice to conscientiously object, Lax gets to enjoy the role of virtuous questioner forever. The stuff of cocktail party conversation. Packard's story doesn't get shared around the canapés. He gets stuck with the grunts, bushwhacking his way through the inevitable trauma locked in every combat veteran, forced to reflection, while Lax waits for the road to be paved...and then doesn't set foot on it. The guy's got to carry the faith for Lax as well as the darkest side of the national character. Hasn't "Skip" been through enough already? Lax's claim that he misses his faith at the end of the book rings out with a disingenuous clang. You don't find faith skating through life in Beverly Hills.

A decent writer, Lax could produce an honest and potentially provocative book about faith if he was willing to explore the complexity and humanity of his father, friends, family, and self. The faith Lax claims he misses so centers not on the precision of a parish priest's rites or information meted out in cherry picked spiritual fortune cookies from a college roommate, but on an itinerant rabbi from hicksville, the companion of sinners, and a man emblematic of self-sacrificial love. The "interrupted" in the title leaves room for a sequel and - hopefully for Eric Lax - redemption.

I found Faith Interrupted to be a refreshingly honest examination of one's life - past, present and what may lay ahead. I myself am just a bit too young to have had friends or immediate family drafted into the Vietnam War - the backdrop to a good part of the book. Lax's decision to seek CO status and all that entailed was fascinating to me as was the contrast it painted to his early years as a church acolyte.
As life proceeds, his faithful convictions, for a number of reasons explained, begin to quiver and then evaporate. His story includes a parallel figure - a good friend in college turned warrior extraordinaire turned Bishop - and their separate but intertwined journeys provide a richness of the human experience that Lax conveys in a down to earth, approachable way. Lax, witty and unapologetic, gives us where he is today and how he got here. I could feel his sadness(disappointment?) that he didn't end up at another point - one with faith. Yet another reader may take away something different. Which is why I found this book to be particularly satisfying; nothing is neatly tied up in a bow at the end. No exclamations of 'I was lost and now I am found!' Or, 'I was once naive and malleable and now I know better'. Rather, it is messy and nuanced, filled with compassion and honest intention to figure it all out - eventually. He repeatedly goes back to the one Christian tenant which he still firmly holds on to; 'God is Love' and it is apparent and wonderful to read about a life so clearly guided by that light.
In closing, my favorite chapter is the last one; that's the one I believe I will go back to time and time again - when my own stagnation and sense of loss need a muse - not a professor with the answer, but someone else who is still willing to look under the rocks - just in case.

Interesting book which resonated with me in many aspects. I also had a clergy father (reformed tradition). His focus was on bible teaching and preaching as opposed to the more sacramental aspects of the church . My mother was dedicated to his ministry, but also had her own public world separate from him teaching and writing where she found much meaning. Though younger than Mr. Lax by about 10 years I also I experienced the threat of Vietnam and had a friend in high school a couple of years older than me who talked about applying for CO status and even asking my dad for a recommendation (but he refused). I did not know anyone personally who died in the conflict but my I knew the fear of my male friends and my brother when draft numbers were published.

Looking back on my own experiences of faith, I recognize how difficult it can be for children of a pastor/priest to separate and come to their own sense of faith from that of their father in my case. My parents were huge personalities (a little self absorbed in their work) which made it challenging for me to find my own spiritual path and I found myself adapting to them often to gain their approval and fit into their own busy schedules. My dad as a major aspect of his ministry was about encouging people to read bible and scripture and having a relationship with Jesus Christ. (He would get in trouble because he was too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals.) Anyway,this mind set has kept me moving forward with my faith in Christ in all the challenges and murkiness and the importance of seeing Christ as the example of God's love (not some vague sense of love) and the importance of connection/relationship with others. I think it's also hard to figure out how one fits in a church setting when you grew up as the children of a pastor/priest. You are there in the worship community but not really seen by others or necessarily feel like you have to reach out and meet anyone cause everyone knows you (e.g., the priest's son, preacher's daughter, etc.) It can be a very sheltered existence which I chose to step out of professionally (even after getting a seminary degree) and have worked in the corporate world for 25+ years.

Thought his description of his relationship with Skip were fascinating. Skip is a person who seems to me is not afraid to stare out into the unknown of faith and believe in spite of it. That's what faith is, isn't it? What was very strking to me is how Mr. Lax shifted after his father died to almost substituting his relationship with Woody Allen, writing a biography of Woody etc. He seemed to move a close identification with his father/the sacramental aspects of the church and quoting scripture and a very through study of biblical and Christian history to support his CO status (which I personally support)to then quoting Woody Allen's books to support a world view now more reflective of Woody's. Thought it was interesting. Know myself how I was looking a long time for someone (replacement father) to help me figure out what I believed and how I fit into the community of faith. (This was going on while both my parents were living as well as after their passing - father (2004) and mother (2009).) I've learned it's only when I am alone (experienced a huge sense of loss of many years in the process) and not relying on the belief system/faith community of my parents, that I can truly do the hard emotional and intellectual work of faith and life even when I do not "feel" that God is there.

Overall a very interesting read. Very thought provoking for me.

I bought this because I could relate to the lot. This book gave me an inside look and the writers life. I am glad I am not the only one who struggles with faith.

Eric Lax's book offers a rich, first-person trip through recent American history -- the post-war expansion of California, Dr. King's civil rights work, the Vietnam War, up to 9/11 . The story is shaped by Lax's life as a devout Episcopalian clergy kid.

I was glad to learn about the author's father, a priest, and mother. Much of the book focuses on Lax's long relationship with his best friend, Skip. Skip's war service and faith life are a strong contrast to the author's. Lax's rich description of Skip's Vietnam service is worthy of an entire book.

The final chapters of the book covering more recent time lack the nuance and depth of the middle chapters. I wish Lax could speak about his current faith struggles with more clarity, using more specific examples. I am not sure I know why or how his faith was interrupted. Maybe sharing more about his family would help? Though we pick up bits along the way about past girlfriends, we don't know how he met his socially-prominent wife and his children are barely mentioned -- more space is given to describing a rain storm during his Peace Corp experience.

Mr. Lax has an excellent writing style. His prose flows and keeps the reader interested even through some of the more detailed descriptions.
This book I would recommend for anyone who has asked questions about faith, spirituality and the meaning of life.