Margot Starbuck
Seeking a Different Kind Of Dad
Since the age of seven, freelance writer and speaker Margot Starbuck says she's been chronicling her journey of overcoming rejection in journals, in speeches and now in her first book.
In The Girl in the Orange Dress: Searching for a Father Who Does Not Fail (InterVarsity, July), Starbuck uncovers information about the day her birth parents gave her up for adoption, learning they'd left her behind in an orange dress.
As a child, Starbuck did what she had to do to survive, but when she entered the world as an adult, she says the armor around her heart began to crack. Her adoptive parents had divorced and moved apart; she was rejected by her stepfather; and later her biological father rejected her again when she tracked him down.
Starbuck, 40, believes her tale of loss and transformation will resonate with others who have lost parents to divorce, death or estrangement. To lighten the mood, Starbuck uses a warm and playful voice. A former pastor and active speaker, Starbuck claims an equal love of both the spoken and written word. She also employs her background in art to help paint a word picture for her audience.
“I'm pretty convinced that my calling is to be a word-bearer, whether it's visual, spoken or written,” she says.
Her voice is also full of empathy for those who may be experiencing similar pain, empathy honed during six years she spent as a chaplain working with people with disabilities.
“Although their brokenness was evident to the eye, I was no less broken, but mine was on the inside,” Starbuck says. “The same message I would have preached to them, that you're precious and beloved and that God is for you, is the one that I needed to receive for myself.”
Starbuck, who lives in Durham, N.C., will continue to employ this message of acceptance and love despite obstacles. Her second book, due out in summer 2010, will use real-life stories to help women evaluate their bodies using a healthy, loving standard, rather than mere physical appearance. In the meantime, Starbuck hopes The Girl in the Orange Dress will inspire others—and lead to more opportunities to speak to her audience in public. —Jackie Walker
Samir Selmanovic
Teaching About God Through Discomfort
Samir Selmanovic never gave God or religion much thought as a young man. Raised by culturally Muslim and loving parents who were essentially atheists, like many of their friends and neighbors in the Yugoslav city of Zagreb (now the capital of Croatia), Selmanovic didn't know what he was missing until his mandatory army service. Then he met an ascetic, homeless Christian, whose spirituality so enchanted him that he converted. In his new book, It's Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian (Jossey-Bass, Sept.), Selmanovic tells his story of struggles for spiritual definition.
His stunned parents nearly disowned him; later, he was disappointed by American Christianity, which he found to be overly individualistic. In times of spiritual crisis, Selmanovic began to not only draw upon his Muslim background but also turned to Judaism for inspiration (hence the inclusive subtitle to his book). Selmanovic credits his steadfast Christianity to other traditions: “I don't know if I would be a Christian today without other faiths.”
An ordained pastor and founder of the New York City interfaith organization Faith House, Selmanovic refuses to call his work “interfaith.” He says, “I am not so much interested in cooperation between faiths as in-depth [practice] and relevance of one's own faith in our interdependent world.” To illustrate his point, Selmanovic reflects on the future marriage of his daughter, who recently graduated from the eighth grade: “I'm sure my daughter will marry someone different than I expect. How am I going to live my faith and explain it to that other? Will my faith have an identity in isolation and be ineffective in a world that depends on diversity?”
He laughs as he describes how hard-liners of different faiths act as if they control divinity and spirituality, when, in reality, they cannot control their personal lives or even their bodily functions. This conclusion came to him when he tried to deliver a sermon while suffering a serious but socially unmentionable disorder that prevented him from standing comfortably for more than a few minutes. He takes a serious tone to describe his theory: “The Theology of Hemorrhoids is basically that our inability to handle the lowest level of our existence should tell us that we cannot be in charge of the Divine.”
With the passion and warmth of a spiritually secure individual, Selmanovic encourages people of faith to confront both skeptics and hard-liners: “I think that our passion toward God and toward humanity can overcome the fundamentalists. We can't tell the fundamentalists to cool down. We can tell them, actually, that, 'We are hotter [than you].' ”
—Asma Hasan
