Chana Keefer, Interview #179

Name: Chana Keefer

Where you live:  Santa Clarita Valley, Southern California, USA

What you do as a vocation or avocation?
Along with my full-time job of wife and homeschooling mom of four, I am an author. My first novel, THE FALL (Rapha Chronicles #1) gives the story of the fall of Lucifer and creation through the eyes of an angel, Rapha, who was once best friends with Lucifer.

Your two favorite books:
The Bible is more than a book to me so I am excluding it from this short list.  Therefore, my two favorite books would be J .R R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (forgive me if that’s cheating) & Gene Stratton Porter’s “Girl of the Limberlost,” a beautiful tale of a young woman raised without love who finds meaning and the means to clothe and educate herself through the riches of the Limberlost swamp.  That novel is a naturalist's dream.

Your two favorite songs:
You’ll laugh.  I’ve told my family if ever I was in a coma, they should play Michael Jackson’s “Shake Your Body.”  If there was the slightest trace of life in me I’d have to move ☺.  Wow, it’s hard to limit this to just one more since music ministers so deeply to me in all my moods.  Okay, since you force me, I’ll choose Sting’s haunting tribute to his father, “Ghost Story.”  It contains some of the most gorgeous lyrics ever written.  “What is the force that binds the stars?  I wore this mask to hide my scars.  What is the power that pulls the tide?  Never could find a place to hide.  What moves the earth around the sun?  What could I do but run and run and run… afraid to love afraid to fail… a mast without a sail.”  (heavy sigh)

Why you are interested in spirituality?
There is a wonderful C.S. Lewis quote:  “You do not have a soul, you are a soul.  You have a body.” To ignore my spirituality would be to ignore what will last for eternity.  Besides, I have found my deepest meaning and fulfillment through the spiritual pursuit of prayer, communion with my Father God, and this gives direction and purpose to every other pursuit and relationship.

Your favorite quote:  
Hmmm.  I think I gave this answer above.

Your favorite web sites:
The Pioneer Woman, The World of Steve Quayle, Unleashed Beauty, One Roof Africa, 24/7 Prayer—in whatever order the current mood dictates.

Your hero?
Jesus, all the way.  Even though He is the Son of God, He took on the role of a servant and obeyed all the way to the cross.  Therefore He fulfilled God’s highest calling for His life and made a way for ALL to return to Father God.  My deepest desire is to fulfill God’s highest calling for my life and Jesus is the best example there is.  There are a couple normal human examples, though, who show that mere mortals can make a huge difference in eternity—Mother Teresa and Kemper Crabb (I am working on the biography of the latter—he worked alongside Mother T. and has built hundreds of churches and orphanages, even hospitals, in Africa and India.)

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?  
I hope to learn that the spiritual really does trump the physical realm.  It’s easy enough to say I believe in God’s power and that I know Christ’s life, death and resurrection give me authority over darkness, but dang, the darkness can sure be overwhelming.  Please God, give me faith!

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"
Anywhere there is heartfelt worship music and people singing praise is wonderful, but my favorite place to “be still and know He is God” is an old barn that was next to my parent’s property when I was growing up.  That barn became my quiet retreat and a sort of weather-beaten cathedral for me.  Even nowadays, just to close my eyes and see that quiet, dusty, bleached wood with the huge openings on the top level that framed views of the East and West horizons, ah! My heart slows, the daily grind fades away and I breathe in peace. 

Kaya Oakes, Interview #178

Name: Kaya Oakes

Where you live: Oakland, California

What you do as a vocation or avocation?
I’m a writer, and I am lucky enough to teach writing for a living. My most recent book, Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church, is a memoir about my life as a progressive, feminist Catholic, and the many, many other progressive Catholics I’ve been lucky to meet, read about, and learn from.

Your two favorite books:
Two? Yikes. I’m surrounded by books day and night, so it’s really hard to narrow down. Since this is a spiritual blog let’s do the Gospel of Luke and Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is.

Your two favorite songs: 
Two? Yikes again; not only am I married to a musician but I’m a musician too. Again, since we’re going spiritual, I vote for Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, which I just heard for the first time (amazing; check out the Andreas Scholl version), and Leonard Cohen’s The Window, which quotes from the great work of Christian mysticism The Cloud of Unknowing.

Why you are interested in spirituality? 
Because I can’t help it. Like a lot of Gen X people I lived in denial of my interest in spirituality and religion for a long time; it was seen by my peers as unfashionable, regressive, and oftentimes straight up dumb. But maturity lead me to recognize the fact that I not only have a soul, I have a thirsty soul.

Your favorite quote:
Right now? “All things counter, original, spare, strange/ Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)/ With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers forth whose beauty is past change.” That’s the great Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Your favorite web sites: 
I’m a huge news junkie so I’m a New York Times addict in addition to reading lots of news feeds and keeping up with stuff via Twitter and Facebook. For Catholic news the National Catholic Reporter is my favorite. For spiritual sites, I’m a big fan of Killing the Buddha, Sacred Space, Occupy Catholics, and a couple of sites I recently discovered: Anarchist Reverend and The Jesuit Post.

Your hero?
A brown skinned feminist rabbi who practiced radical inclusion. You may have heard about him.

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn? How to keep my mouth shut!

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"
The women’s homeless shelter where I volunteer; the living rooms of the women in my contemplation group; my sofa; Lake Merritt in Oakland; the beaches in Gualala and Point Reyes, California; and in the Basilica of Saint Francis, in Assisi, Italy.