'Habibi' is a complex and unapologetic work of fantasy - no idle undertaking for readers of any faith or no faith at all, but one well worth the trouble.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
An ambitious, surreal tale of the love between a young Arab girl sold into marriage and the orphan boy she adopts, 'Habibi' spans multiple eras of conflict and change, stretching the lifetimes of its two protagonists over many centuries.
It's an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever.
I don't want to write a hagiography on myself. To me, that is just a waste.
The truth of faith is a slender, glowing element that runs through even the seemingly ordinary and undramatic moments of existence. Even at low intensity, it is a steady source of illumination. Such religious truth is powerful even when it seems faint, even when it seems obscured by the larger events of history.
Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.
The writer has two kinds of faith: actual writing and sitting openly. Have faith in your personal effort or sweat. And faith in God, or whatever you want to call it. Then the voices will come. Faith is the big deal.
My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.
The Bible was not written for entertainment purposes, so it's a real hodgepodge and a compendium of all kinds of stuff.
I think I've been very lucky all my life because the writing and the faith seem to go together.
Pastoral ministry is about an ongoing confrontation with the god of this world, with blindness, hardness of heart, remaining sin.