From Publishers Weekly
Very few self-described "secular Jews" are confronted with the conundrum of a father who aspires to be a priest in the Episcopal Church. Fortunately, Proctor is a dogged and accomplished detective and an unobtrusive and appropriately revealing narrator. Raised mainly by her mother in a nonreligious household, she uses the occasion of her divorced father's revelations about his religious odyssey to explore the history, theology and politics of Christian vocation from the perspective of a nonbelieving daughter. In addition to allowing the reader into the richness of an ongoing dialogue with her father, Proctor offers wide-ranging research and interviews with participants in the process used in the Episcopal Church to discern whether candidates are called to ordained ministry. This is one of the book's real strengths, but it may pose a problem for readers who are more interested in the general topic of vocation than in specific denominational details. Near the beginning of this unique and often gripping chronicle, Proctor comments that she is compelled to "organize, ascribe and explain" her intellectual and emotional inner life. One senses throughout that she has, in this exhaustive process, found a way to reconcile the enigmas of an oft-absent father with her own search for answers to another deep riddle: the mystery of the cords that bind us into families. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Why do some have a calling, and others don't? What exactly does a calling mean? What are its origins? These are some of the questions Proctor addresses in this combination of personal history, family history, and reflection. She began thinking seriously about religious calling when her father, then a sixtysomething university professor and divorce, announced a desire to become an Episcopal priest. Proctor herself is a self-proclaimed secular Jew, an outsider to organized religion who yet, as child and youth, navigated between Christianity and Judaism, never embracing either. She was brought up without God "in a religiously ambivalent household," and that makes her father's late-life transition from lapsed Catholic to believer in high-church Protestantism all the more surprising. Still, her father had an abiding love of ritual and its promise of eternal continuity. After her father's calling is ultimately rejected, Proctor raises other questions: Who has the authority to recognize or deny a calling, and what does that say about organized religion, mortality, and faith itself? Provocative and thoughtful. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
At the first revelation that her father, a sixtyish university professor, wants to become an Episcopal priest, Minna Proctor is flummoxed. She neither encourages nor disparages him because she simply doesn’t know what it means. Brought up primarily by her mother in a household without any religious expression or guidance, Proctor was surprised to learn that her unconventionally charming, intellectual father had a religious life, and what’s more, a higher calling. When he is summarily turned away, Proctor delves into the byzantine discernment process that rejected her father from the priesthood and the pivotal notion of calling. Based on lengthy conversations with her father, interviews with clergy and religious scholars, and readings of classic faith narratives from Augustine to Simone Weil, Do You Hear What I Hear? is a broad-minded and fascinating exploration of a very human phenomenon in the light of cultural shifts over the last three decades.
About the Author
Minna Proctor is an essayist, magazine editor, and award-winning translator. Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, The Nation, Aperture, and The New York Observer. She is executive editor of Colors magazine. This is her first book.
Do You Hear What I Hear?: Religious Calling, the Priesthood, and My Father FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Minna Proctor delves into the Byzantine discernment process that rejected her father from the priesthood - discovering, to her surprise, how insanely (and appropriately) difficult it is to actually become a priest - and the pivotal role that calling plays in the evaluation, both historically and to this day. What unfolds is a remarkable pursuit - a young woman's quest to understand religious and spiritual experience, her family, and the cultural contest in which she was raised." Based on lengthy conversations with her father, interviews with clergy and religious scholars, and readings of classic faith narratives from Augustine to Simone Weil, Do You Hear What I Hear? is a broad-minded exploration of a very human phenomenon - the urge to know what you are supposed to be doing with your life - in the light of cultural shifts, from the deinstitutionalizing of American life to wholesale consumerism and the often baffling culture of free choice.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Very few self-described "secular Jews" are confronted with the conundrum of a father who aspires to be a priest in the Episcopal Church. Fortunately, Proctor is a dogged and accomplished detective and an unobtrusive and appropriately revealing narrator. Raised mainly by her mother in a nonreligious household, she uses the occasion of her divorced father's revelations about his religious odyssey to explore the history, theology and politics of Christian vocation from the perspective of a nonbelieving daughter. In addition to allowing the reader into the richness of an ongoing dialogue with her father, Proctor offers wide-ranging research and interviews with participants in the process used in the Episcopal Church to discern whether candidates are called to ordained ministry. This is one of the book's real strengths, but it may pose a problem for readers who are more interested in the general topic of vocation than in specific denominational details. Near the beginning of this unique and often gripping chronicle, Proctor comments that she is compelled to "organize, ascribe and explain" her intellectual and emotional inner life. One senses throughout that she has, in this exhaustive process, found a way to reconcile the enigmas of an oft-absent father with her own search for answers to another deep riddle: the mystery of the cords that bind us into families. (Feb. 5) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A 60ish father's surprising desire to become an Episcopal priest catalyzes this thoughtful debut, an exploration of what constitutes a religious "calling" and what role faith plays in life. Magazine editor Proctor's father, a music theory professor, was raised a Catholic and spent a year in seminary before marrying her mother, who is Jewish. The couple divorced when Proctor was a teenager, and she considers herself to be a secular Jew-an unacceptable definition, she learned, after consulting an eminent Jewish scholar who sternly declared, "Jews believe in God." The author was astonished when her father, remarried and living in Ohio with his new family, told her that he wanted to be an Episcopalian priest. Then, while she was still adjusting to this news, he called to say that his application had been remanded. According to the "Vocations Committee," a group composed of a priest and two parishioners in good standing that employs a process called "discernment" to determine whether the applicant has a genuine calling and is able to express it convincingly, he needed to "work on the articulation of his calling." Already intrigued by her father's intentions and his regrets about his past behavior, Proctor decided to investigate what exactly an acceptable "calling" is, how the discernment process works, and the history of both the priesthood and ordination. Studying such noted religious writers as Karen Armstrong, Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, she also talked to male and female clerics, nuns, monks and a range of Jewish scholars. The closing pages here show her father still uncertain how to proceed, but Proctor has eloquently distilled all she learned about religion and faith. Though herfather stands center-stage, he and her family's past play secondary roles to her sensitive examination of profound ideas with universal relevance. Intelligent and intellectually provocative, though also respectful: a notable example of fine writing on religion. Agent: Ira Silverberg/Donadio & Olson
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