Are You There God? It's Me, Scott (Part One)

“I’ve been looking for you, God. I looked for you in temple. I looked for you in church. But I didn’t feel you at all. Why? Why, God? Why do I only feel you when I’m alone?”

When I was in elementary school, I read a book by Judy Blume entitled, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Though the book was written in 1970, the film adaptation was only released this past April. Yesterday, I watched it as I sat on a plane, flying to the United States to visit my parents. I expected that it would be a fun piece of nostalgia.

What I discovered, which I had not anticipated, is that this movie offers a serious, sophisticated, and moving representation of a young girl’s personal relationship with God, the dangers of confusing God with religion, and the meaning, purpose, and goal of genuine prayer.

Margaret is a sixth grade girl whose father is Jewish and mother is Christian. Her parents choose to raise her without any religion, saying that she can decide her religious identity for herself when she gets older. Nevertheless, Margaret has a strong relationship with God and regularly speaks with Him, always opening up her heartfelt conversations with the formula, “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.” (Judy Blume has said that this aspect of Margaret’s life is a reflection of her own experience at that age.) She talks to God about the things that typically matter to a preteen who just moved to a new town, and who is dealing with the anxieties associated with growing up physically and emotionally; and while she doesn’t ever seem to get the answer that she wants, she clearly believes that God is listening. Yet every time she tries to experience God through religion, she leaves disappointed. As she tells God on her twelfth birthday, walking through a Catholic church after realizing that she had done something shameful, “I’ve been looking for you, God. I looked for you in temple. I looked for you in church. But I didn’t feel you at all. Why? Why, God? Why do I only feel you when I’m alone?”

It is fascinating that up to this point, Margaret’s prayers have gone completely unanswered. When she buys sanitary pads at a drugstore and prays for the cashier to be a woman, the female cashier is immediately replaced by a man. When she confides in God that she desperately wants to visit her grandmother in Florida, her upcoming vacation to Florida is canceled. Despite her prayers going unanswered, she acknowledges that she experiences Him most acutely when she’s by herself. Her relationship with God is undermined not by His silence, but by her encounters with organized religion. (I will delve into this aspect of the movie in a subsequent post.)

I believe that Margaret, in her naivete and innocence, has discovered that the essence of prayer is not the answer that one receives, but the very act of communing with a Presence that is also a Personality. She intuits, as Chazal taught us, that the heart of prayer is the sense of dependence, and the experience of being close to the One upon Whom we are always dependent. She finds God in the conversation, not in the answer.

On fast day afternoons, Ashkenazi Jews read the haftarah from Yeshayahu 55 which begins with the words, Dirshu Hashem b’himatzo, kra’uhu b’hyehoto karov - “Seek out Hashem when He is available, call out to Him when He is near.” This is a strange choice for fast days, which are typically the days of hester panim, when God hides His face from us. Are we saying that we should call out to God in prayer on other days instead?

Years ago, when I asked this question, a teacher explained that when God is hitting us, He is close. However, I would like to offer a different suggestion: is it not possible that God is more apparent and available when He says no rather than yes? That on those fast days like Tisha B’Av, when our prayers were clearly rejected, His Presence is palpable if we only look beneath the surface?

Perhaps the affirmative response leads us to seeing God, in C.S. Lewis’s words, as the grandfather in the sky who provides us with presents and solves all of our problems. We naturally and correctly want God to answer us positively; but when God is the deus ex machina, the vending machine that never fails us, we risk becoming infantilized and never developing a mature relationship with the divine. When God says yes, we thank Him, move forward, and potentially forget Him until we need His help again. When God answers no, we are gifted the possibility of being enveloped in a divine embrace, and allowing the experience of divine sympathy to linger. When Hashem says no, He is not rejecting us, but giving us opportunities to develop in ways that we likely have not considered; this means that His love is just as strong as it was before, and that we can feel that love as much (or perhaps even more) as when He solves problems on our behalf.

God can answer yes, and sometimes does. But stronger faith is built in the experience that accompanies God’s saying no. Real emunah and bitachon are developed when we recognize the negative response to prayer not as divine silence, and not as divine absence, but as divine care and understanding of what is actually in our best interests. Just as saying no to our children is a sign of our desire to see them grow into independent and capable human beings (and let’s face it - it’s often easier to give in and do what they want), Hashem’s no is part of His plan to enable and encourage us to build a world permeated with goodness - a job which, we know, is not His, but ours.

A consequence of unanswered prayer can be deeper faith, and greater commitment to fulfilling our purpose rather than relying upon God to do our job for us. While we still hope that He answers yes, the answer remains secondary to the experience. Margaret knows this and knows that God is listening, even if He doesn’t do what she asks. She finds God in His silence and in her loneliness. On the other hand, God is absent - not just silent - in the places where other people claim that He is present. That is essence of the last thirty minutes of the film… and I’ll speak about that in my next post.