This Is Why I Came

by Mary Rakow

A woman sits in prayerful meditation, waiting to offer her first confession in more than thirty years. She holds a small book on her lap, one that she’s made, and tells herself again the Bible stories it contains, the ones she has written anew, for herself, each story told aslant, from Jonah to Jesus, Moses to Mary Magdalen. Woven together and stitched by hand, they provide a new version, virtually a new translation, of the heart of this ancient and sacred text. Rakow's Bernadette traces, through each brief and familiar story, a line where belief and disbelief touch, the line that has been her home, ragged and neglected, that hidden seam.

The result is an amazing book of extraordinary beauty, so human and humorous, and yet so holy it becomes a work of poetry, a canticle, a song of lament and praise. In the private terrain of silence and devotion, shared with us by a writer of power and grace, Rakow offers, through Bernadette, her own lectio divina for the modern world.

No reader will forget this book or be able to read the Bible itself without a new perspective on this text that remains, arguably, Western civilization's greatest literary achievement.

Genres: Fiction, Religion, Spirituality, Short Stories, Christian, Theology

204 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 2015

About the author

Mary Rakow, Ph.D. comes to creative writing from theology and parenting, with advanced degrees from Harvard University and Boston College. She is a Lannan Foundation Fellowship recipient. Her debut novel, The Memory Room was shortlisted for the Stanford Saroyan Prize, teh PEN Center West Fiction Prize and the LA Times Fiction Award. Her commissioned essay on the visual artist Enrique Martinez-Celaya is forthcoming in December 2012, published by Poligrafa, titled Working Methods: Enrique Martinez Celaya. She has recently abandoned the novel as the right form for her current thinking and is breaking it apart, unsure what will result. Ah! Onward....Meanwhile, she has the privilege of working with private writing students in the SF Bay Area, a real joy! and occasionally she edits manuscripts for traditional and self-publication.

For a video of Mary reading at Lip Service West:
http://player.vimeo.com/video/4300078...

Reviews

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long after being vomited up by that great fish, the Jonah character in Mary Rakow’s retelling of the Bible thinks, “I wanted a better God.”

During this season of sanctified shopping and faith-based terrorism, that still sounds like a reasonable request. Theodicy — the problem of evil — is an ongoing challenge for those of us not blessed or cursed with perfect faith. Rakow’s slim novel, “This Is Why I Came,” approaches that ancient conundrum by returning to the source of Judeo-Christian attitudes about the divine. In fewer than 200 pages, she walks across the stormy surface of the Old and New Testaments, recasting a few of the most famous Bible stories as a kind of Revised Testament of Sorrow. With a Ph.D. in theology from Boston College, Rakow could easily entangle us in the knotty provenance and competing theological implications of these sacred tales, but she’s cast off her academic robe for this delicate work of fiction, which is informed by. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this small, brilliant collection, Mary Rakow strips the skin of centuries from the central narratives of Western Culture--the stories of the Bible, both old and new Testaments. Each story is a tiny burst of genius, as Rakow exposes the raw human being in all his or her grief and yearning--Adam, Eve, Noah, Sarah, Joseph... What I like about this is that she takes religion not as refuge, or a gift, but as an arena of mistakes, passion and error, delusion.

Can you imagine the profoundly disruptive nature of an encounter with God? This is an inflammatory, Blakean book. Like Blake, this is a unique exhalation of spirit, of art. Heretical? Or merely a soul finding her own way, through her own gifts, addressing the enormous questions. What is the nature of protection, of forgiveness. This is a deeply religious impulse to wrestle with the Bible, to refuse to take things in the delivered way. Rakow is a scholar, with degrees in divinity from Boston College and Harvard Divinity school, but more than that, she's an artist of the highest caliber, having already been a Lannan Fellow with her first novel, The Memory Room. A haunting, razor sharp, poetic work.

"And he saw, given its power to blind, that the hunger for innocence in an adult can be the most dangerous hunger."

This business of miracles and divinity is not fluffy sheep and shepherds with crooks. I'd put this on the shelf with Gioconda Belli's book of Adam and Eve, Infinity in the Palm of her Hand." It's a questing book, poking into those old stories, like ancient ashes, to see what still glows red. A tour de force. Don't miss it.

[Kate Savage · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a time in my life when this would have been my favorite book. A feminist modern slant to a retelling of the Bible. But I'm in a phase now where I'm bored with those characters. They've gotten so much attention already. It's like when they come out with another Spiderman movie and you wonder Is there no new IP left in this world?*

But I'd recommend this to theologians and those who are earnestly trying to remain in the Christian tradition while needing to change what that means.

*jk I love Spiderman movies.

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a much-condensed retelling of the Bible from a more human perspective. Rather than the grand scale of the Christian Bible, with its epic teleological themes, we read a series of short stories that give us insight into the very human feelings of the Biblical characters, including God himself. If you are very conventionally religious, don't read this book; you will surely object to God's imperfections, puzzlement and occasional pettiness as he is portrayed in this book.
The New Testament chapters are especially poignant. The author is a theology scholar, and her deep understanding of the New Testament, and of Christ and his purpose, come through. She portrays Jesus, John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, and other key New Testament characters as human and ordinary but at the same time sacred and extraordinary (in ways that they aren't always comfortable with). I love how she shows Jesus becoming gradually aware of his immense power and how to use it. I also liked how she treats Saint Joseph, Christ's human father, and her explanation for why he mostly disappears from the New Testament right after the incident at the Temple.
In the way God and the human characters are sometimes blurred, especially in her version of the creation story, I think the author is hinting at God and man having co-created each other. I'm an open-minded person who loves to look at my faith through different lenses, but other people of faith may find this offensive, so fair warning.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com

[Blair Hodges · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning and earthy scriptural account of a vulnerable God who learns mercy from human beings, rather than the other way around. I couldn't help but read it in one sitting. And I'll visit this text again.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This. Was so good.
Astonishing, perhaps.
Painful in its beauty and beautiful in its pain.
I loved it.
Life is not what we expect it to be. For any of us.

[Lauren Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book. Highly recommended.

[Sara Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do I... believe in God now????

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blurb: A woman sits in prayerful meditation, waiting to offer her first confession in more than thirty years. She holds a small book on her lap, one that she’s made, and tells herself again the Bible stories it contains, the ones she has written anew, for herself, each story told aslant, from Jonah to Jesus, Moses to Mary Magdalen. Woven together and stitched by hand, they provide a new version, virtually a new translation, of the heart of this ancient and sacred text. Rakow's Bernadette traces, through each brief and familiar story, a line where belief and disbelief touch, the line that has been her home, ragged and neglected, that hidden seam.

This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. The story, or rather stories, are framed by Bernadette, who is waiting to give her first confession in 30 years. Over that time, she has revisited the most iconic of the Bible stories - Cain and Abel, the Annunciation, Noah and the Flood, Jonah and Fish- and found in them new insights and often, the heart of sadness. She gives these mythic figures agency and introspection in a way that is breathtaking to read.

I savored this book from prologue to acknowledgments.

[Steven Peck · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful meditation and rewriting of the biblical narratives. Lyrical and of depth.

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, truly unique book. It's not unique because it retells biblical stories--there are many novels that do that, too often in a way that disappoints because they bind themselves too closely to the biblical text; for me, they succeed to the extent that they're imaginative. This one, though, is not so much a retelling of biblical stories as a poets' response to biblical stories. There are 15 responses to stories from the Hebrew scriptures (what Christians usually call the Old Testament), from the Creation to Jonah, and 30 to the Gospels (and one to the Book of Revelation). (The chapters are very short, sometimes less than a page and rarely more than 3.) It reminds me in some ways of an Easter Vigil service, drawing a thread through these stories, not so much as an account of the history of salvation as an account of God's problematic relationship with humans--and this is a somewhat insecure God who frets about humans' failure to see him (yes, the author does use male gender-specific language for God) as a God of mercy. Readers will need a pretty good biblical knowledge to fully appreciate what the author is up to here. The language is beautiful, the thought provocative, with a striking appreciation for the body and for doubt. For example, as Joseph, the father of Jesus, lay dying, "A breeze through the window, another drawing fell to the floor, and he realized he was an expert in doubt after all. What he did know, however, he would tell anyone who asked. He would say that there is loneliness in doubting because doubt misses its twin, which is wonder. And there is loneliness in skepticism because it misses its twin, which is awe. The Angelus sounded in the clay bell down the street. 'Come, my good Master,' the donkey said. 'I am taking you to glory.'" (174) Then, in a final chapter, set in the 21st century, with Jonah as a priest hearing the confession of a woman who has not been to confession for 30 years: "'I don't feel I'm committing a sin that I can't believe in God anymore. I can't will it. What happened, happened. But I really wish it would change. This is why I came.' She wants her integrity and her faith, both at the same time, and Jonah smiles, the breathing of the whale, the constant flow of water around his face and body, water in and out through the baleen, seaweed tangled in his hair. He wonders if, on one day at one hour, she yelled the same thing at God, 'Let me go! I'm no longer your prophet! I want to be a sailor.' 'It's not a sin to refuse to believe in a God who's too small,' he replies and his certainty touches her. 'To doubt the God you believe in is to serve him. It's an offering. It's your gift.'" (182) Well worth a close, slow reading, a few short chapters at a time.

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in the Bible are pretty spare; there is plenty of space to fill in the details. This book is a reimagining of some of them and makes you realize how much we don't know about what really happened. I learned of this book, published in 2015, when listening recently to an interview with the author on the podcast Fireside with Blair Hodges (9/14/21). In it, Rakow said that great art is mostly emptiness (a new idea for me), and that we enter it with our selves, which creates a consummation. I have considered this as I've thought about different works of art in various genres, and it's exactly right. When a work of art moves me and becomes important to me, it's because I've brought my own experience to it, and because it's helped me understand that experience on a deeper level. It's because there is an emptiness or spaciousness there with room for me to enter and bring my experience and insights.

The Bible stories are framed within the brief story of a woman who left the Catholic church for 30 years and is now coming to confession in spite of not really believing in God anymore. The stories are scripture that she has created. The title of the book was intriguing to me - why did she call it this, and was it Jesus speaking? Within the woman's story, Rakow uses those exact words, "this is why I came" twice, once at the beginning and once at the end, with two different people speaking them.

I didn't love all the stories or think they are "right" about what happened but I loved the idea that they COULD have happened. Hodges called this book "one of the most religiously rich books" he's ever read.

[Riana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very beautiful work, and more insightful and well crafted than I was honestly expecting. I loved the ways Rakow explored the books of the Bible, and the interesting perspectives that were brought forth out of these stories as well. I don't find any of the changes or the restructuring of the stories to be at all heretical, and I think it does exactly what Rakow meant to do - crafts a form of the Bible (New Testament mostly) that can touch audiences and aid them like it did for the woman in the book. In general, this is a fascinating work that looks deeply at faith, what it means to doubt, what it means to try to have faith in something, and it observes some of the questions Christians may have when considering their faith and God. The book is not perfect, but I think the new perspectives it brings were wonderful to consume. I also appreciate some of the artistic research put into this book, and the poetic references. I also found the last chapter to be incredibly affecting, especially for this current period of my life in terms of my relationship with my own faith, the different ways to be Catholic, and my interest in going back to confession after a very long time like the woman in the book did.

[Jason Makansi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Mary Rakow's The Memory Room, and was eagerly anticipating her next work.

Initially, I was captivated by the intro of this lady returning to her church after many years of absence with a scrap book of her own life in hand.

The rest of the novel is the retelling of stories from the Bible. I got fifty pages in and quit. The retelling, sad to say, was not interesting to me.

A few months later, I picked the novel up again, figuring I must have missed something. The Memory Room was such a powerful work, I wanted to give the author the benefit of the doubt. I rarely, if ever, pick up a novel the second time if I wasn't liking it the first.

The experience was no better, but I did get to the end. I wondered why the scrap book this woman brought with her in the beginning, such a potent metaphor and theme to work with, wasn't material to the story? And why be the Nth author to work with bible stories?

Maybe I'm still missing the point. Maybe I'll read The Memory Room a third time.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few writers whose work you keep reading aloud because you can’t quite believe the idea, the turn of phrase. Mary Rakow is one. In the re-telling and reinterpretation of Biblical stories, she dares to write about the big questions of belief and identity. Who is God and why is he so insecure? Sometimes there are no answers for what seem to be demands made on a whim. Abraham is told to kill his beloved son. Jonah simply must go to Nineveh. Cain’s offering of his first harvest isn’t good enough because God prefers a living sacrifice.
Rakow also turns to those characters who have failed, those who are written off or written out, and places them center stage with tremendous compassion and monumental integrity. Joseph’s tangible disappointment in not being able to be a true father to his unique son, Jesus, and his further disappointment in not being able to have another child with Mary. These are small moments, architecturally wrought. This is a book I will return to for more than just the stories.

[Alex Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite book of fiction.
I can't get over how gorgeous and stunning the writing is.
It's not perfect. Towards the end there's two longer chapters that kind of dragged, because at that point we've gotten the point, but they're still really good. But it perfectly encapsulates my experience of Christianity and the world in general. I've been in many bible studies where people ask questions like "um, what the does this have to do with anything" or "is god okay?" and I wish I could've pulled this book out to help explain things.
My favorite chapter is 49, John on Patmos.
So it's like bible fanfiction. But the writer has her PhD in theology and really knows her shit. So it's more like a narrative presentation of biblical texts so as to illuminate major points and elements contemporary bible readers miss because of our different historical contexts. She makes you feel the longing and pain behind so many stories often taken for granted and seen as trite, which is such an invaluable gift to anyone who tries to make the bible a part of their life.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was stunned by this book. Mary Rakow imagines Bible stories in entirely new contexts and weaves in such humanity and longing for God that it took my breath away. Throughout this slim volume Rakow wrestles with belief in God in the face of acute suffering; with God's response to that suffering and his own desires and needs. How does one deal with receiving a miracle but it's not the miracle one hopes for? How does doubt actually become a gift to that very God one struggles to belief in? This book is also about how one comes to understand religion and it's role in one's life. It has changed the way I think about the Bible and the received wisdom of how the stories in the Bible should be understood.

[Bentley Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very different, humanized view of well-known scriptural stories. I’m still digesting and pondering this one and am not fully sure how to react to it. But I do love the way it embraces both faith, questions, and even doubts. That message—of hope, faith, and doubts—is summarized in a few lines from the closing chapter and the closing lines of the book:

“It’s not a sin to refuse to believe in a God who’s too small…. To doubt the God you believe in us to serve him. It’s an offering. It’s your gift.”

…

“This also seems fitting and true. That something good would come from the future, and that it already has, wrapping itself around her, radiating backwards three days from [Easter] Sunday to where she now stands.”

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evocative and thought provoking but also a little slippery and hard to nail down. It is the kind of book that reminds me I am not good at describing books heavy with symbolism and literary reimagination. Rakow wrestles with doubt and faith, violence and beauty, love and rage. Biblical characters and stories from Genesis to Revelation are retold and reimagined as is God's character and personality. The stories are full of doubt and questioning and yet there is also a longing for connection and faith. It moves quickly and covers a lot of ground. Some will find it blasphemous and others will find it engaging and beautiful. Maybe both at the same time...

[The Atlantic]

The protagonist “has stitched together a ‘Bible of her own’ … She’s been radically reimagining Old and New Testament stories. In 62 very brief tales, she evokes kindred spirits buffeted by a sense of divine implacability. Isaac feels lost, invisible. ‘Get out!’ a terrified Mary tells the angel Gabriel, repelling him again and again before she at last lets him in. God, too, is on edge, unmoored.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/newslette...

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few clever ideas here, but I generally did not find turning biblical characters into 21st century people with modern speech and habits and reactions was particularly enlightening. The author clearly believes that God is a human construct, a not unreasonable thought, and the God portrayed here is often weak, vain and full of himself. Fortunately, it was short, so I did not waste much time.

[Jenny Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite. A personal and poetic reimagining of the biblical narrative that demonstrates, in its rewriting, the way grace works to redeem a soul through the gift of new narrative sight.

More aligned with Saramago’s “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” than Dillard’s “Holy the Firm” or Robinson’s “Gilead,” but recommended to fans of all three.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really fascinating meditations between the lines of Bible stories (I especially liked Jesus's temptation in the wilderness and his relationship with John the Baptist/Forerunner), but very poetically affected in a way that doesn't appeal to me.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, I think. It's essentially a bunch of short stories that re-tell Bible stories by going deeper into one person's perspective, and they're framed as the writings of a woman named Bernadette, who is waiting to make her first confession in 30 years. Not bad, but not super memorable.

[Josh Higham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very short book, but it's not quick or easy. I feasted on it... For 2 weeks or more. Rakow's imaginative retellings of classic Bible stories are challenging and soul-expanding. I will never think of Cain as a monster again, having read Rakow's gentle rendering of his life.

[Christi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so different from really anything I've read. It was a retelling of the bible stories from a more human, frail, fragile viewpoint and it was beautiful and disturbing and tragic and hopeful all at the same time. Definitely worth the read, and something I'll need to think about a while.

[James Whiteloaf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn't the reason why I came

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting treatment of scripture. Imaginative and boldly journeyed. Still something a little too interior and draped in mystery for my taste.

[Maria Hiers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tears

[Kim Matheson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful books I have ever, ever read.