Heretic: A Memoir

by Jeanna Kadlec

Staring at the blank page of my journal—the journals I most recently used to talk to God, to process the here and now—I have no idea how to write what I am thinking without turning it into a prayer: a petition, a question, a conversation in which the answer lies outside myself. If I am not ultimately directing my thoughts and questions toward God, who am I directing them to? A self? Myself? My sinful, depraved, untrustworthy self that I have been taught to check at the door every time I’ve talked to Jesus for my entire life? I am seeking something, anything, that will help me better comprehend my nascent emotions without turning toward a god who I cannot—and no longer want to—hear. There is no ghost—holy or literal—but his absence is overwhelming, the kind of haunting that, in Avery Gordon’s words, produces a “something-to-be-done.”*