If there is a single lesson I’ve learned in fifteen years as a religion journalist—and, frankly, in my 40 years as a human being—it’s that God is huge. Enormous.  Unbox-able and untamable. God is ever present. The author and creator of all things. The Divine spark and the holy companion.  For all of us.

God is bigger than anything we can fathom. God is nearer to us than the freckles on our faces or the whirls at the end of our fingerprints. God dwells in all of creation and in every single person. The Go-Between God helps us make connections with other souls that we would never make on our own. God is the thread that ties us together, the breath in our lungs; our hope, our friend, our parent and our guide, even when we are blind to God’s presence.

Some of us like to think of the world as falling into two, distinct and mutually exclusive categories: the Sacred or the Profane, or the Spiritual and the Secular. As I understand it, when it comes to God and the movement of God’s Spirit, labels just don’t fit. Everything is spiritual. Everything has the potential to be sanctified and therefore to be sacred. And in my experience, more often than not God shows up most spectacularly in the places some folks believe God isn’t supposed to be found. It’s a profound lesson I learned for the first time twenty-eight years ago when I experienced my first epiphany.

I remember it vividly: a 12-year-old me standing their with my buddy Rob, fiddling with the stereo, as he put on an album someone had given him.

“I think you’ll like it. They’re an Irish rock band, but they’re Christians,” he told me as the first track began to play. Drums faded in, a bass guitar began to thump, an electric guitar began to keen, and then this voice, a man’s rogue tenor the likes of which I’d never heard before began howling:

"I try to sing this song,
I try to stand up but I can’t find my feet
I try, I try to speak up,
But only in you I am complete.
Gloria in te domine,
Gloria in exultate,
O God, loosen my lips!
I try to get in but I can’t find the door,
The door is open,
You’re standing there,
You let me in,
Gloria!"

I remember feeling like my soul was doing back flips. The words of that song were familiar, a psalm, a chant from the liturgy, an image of Christ standing at the door of our hearts and knocking. I recognized them from church. But somehow they’d never had that kind of effect on me before.

As the next tracks on the vinyl album played, one after the other filled with biblical imagery and declarations of spiritual yearning, I was completely transfixed by the extraordinary mix of faith with rock ‘n’ roll—a forbidden fruit in my house growing up, by the way. I had been taught that I was supposed to be “in” the world but not “of” it. Who was this band? How did these guys manage to pull such a seemingly paradoxical mixture off? Who else was doing it and was there a chance that I could do it, too?

Hearing U2’s album “October” for the first time all those years ago set me on a course that continues to this day. It’s a search for the truly sacred in the supposedly profane. A quest to discover God’s face hidden in culture, in those so-called “forbidden” realms where, according to a lot of religious folks, the holy isn’t supposed to dwell. That day I began my search for the same kind of unrivaled inspiration and spiritual elation I experienced so powerfully in Rob’s living room.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by religion. My parents tell stories about me at age five or six sitting on the floor of our family room pouring over a coffee table book of world religions, with its pictures of whirling dervishes, Muslim women in hijab, Hindu girls with hennaed hands, gilded icons from Russian Orthodoxy, and giant Japanese Buddhas.

Religion was a big part of my life growing up, first in Roman Catholicism and then in the strange new land of evangelical Protestantism.

I was—and still am—a believer. But after my musical baptism in the river of rock ‘n’ roll, I became consumed with the idea that spirituality could be expressed just as eloquently—and maybe even more so—outside of a house of worship than in it. I became convinced that faith could be lived in radically different ways. Because God is a really big God.

Now on the cusp of 40, I’m still looking, as fascinated as ever. My search led me into journalism and I’ve been blessed to be able to cover religious and spiritual issues almost exclusively for my entire career.

On what I call the “God Beat,” it’s been an embarrassment of riches. On the job I’ve been blessed with extraordinary experiences and encounters with people of all faiths and none that have enlivened my own faith. I’ve had the chance to sit down with many of my personal heroes of the faith: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Annie Lamott, Tony Campolo, Jean Vanier, Elie Wiesel, Frederick Buechner, Barack Obama, and Bono—that unlikely Irish prophet whose voice singing out to God was the catalyst that sent me on this grand adventure all those years ago in Rob’s living room.

As a journalist, I’ve had a front-row seat to history. I’ve traveled the globe, searching for the holy. My work has taken me from the West Wing to the dugout at Wrigley Field, from the Vatican to the Playboy Mansion, and from a Nobel Laureate’s study to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

I’ve discovered the sacred in churches, temples, mosques, ashrams and gurudwaras. I’ve also encountered God on the dance floor of a rave party, in the back of a rock star’s bus, in a cancer patient’s kitchen, and in the eyes of an AIDS orphan in Malawi. I’ve had thousands of conversations with people—famous, infamous and spectacularly ordinary—about their experience with the Divine. What I’ve discovered, more than anything else, is that everyone—everyone—has a sacred story, one that God alone is writing.

In his book, “Now and Then,” Frederick Buechner urges us to pay attention to our lives, because God’s fingerprints are all over the place.  “Listen to your life,” Buechner says. “See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

Buechner says that we must “Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat,”—and, I would add, make your soul do back flips—“because they are signs that the holy is drawing nigh.”

May you have the ears to hear the voice of the holy and eyes to see the Divine at work in the world. All around you. All the time. In every person and in every thing. In each sacred encounter and joy, in each new experience and in sorrow. May you be surprised by the holy. And may you, too, encounter the God of love in the most unexpected of places.

Conversation with Cathleen Falsani

Daniel Pawlus: Cathleen, thank you for joining us today.

Cathleen Falsani: My pleasure.

Pawlus: Welcome back to Chicago.

Falsani: Thank you. It’s nice to be back!

Pawlus: I know Lillian and I are looking forward to talking to you about the “God beat.” As a reporter you’ve met with so many interesting people. I’d like to start by asking you, was it a challenge to hear different people’s spiritual journeys, especially famous people, and try to have some context on how to report on that? There’s always a shadow side of religion, obviously, and the upbeat side.

Falsani: Well, I think when I started having these more intentional conversations with famous people—we call them culture shapers because it’s hard to say that Britney Spears is a celebrity and so is Elie Wiesel. I mean there are different kinds of celebrity—I wanted people to have, especially people of some renown, the opportunity to talk about their faith without worrying about being hit with a challenge or somebody turning the dark side toward them. In order for us to feel safe, in order for us to be really honest, especially those of us in the public eye, about what we believe or don’t, what we understand or what we doubt, you have to have that safe space. So that was a very different muscle and a very intentional choice that we made during the God Factor project. It was different than chasing a news story or going to a press conference with the Cardinal. It’s a different kind of a thing. Also, the first time even encountering somebody who is a bishop or the Cardinal himself, is trying to learn how to turn off that deference that we have for famous people or somebody with a title.

Lillian Daniel: I have a question for you. My father was a journalist of a different generation, obviously, and in his generation journalism was always supposed to be so objective and you weren’t supposed to have yourself in there. But one of the things I think so many appreciate about your writing is that you’re right in there, your voice is there and you’re telling us what you you’re thinking, your religious background, what you believe as you’re describing these other folks. How does that work for you and how do you know how much of yourself to put out there?

Falsani: Well, I was a bit schizophrenic for a while because I was a reporter four days a week and a columnist for one. The two are very, very different. When I was covering the news, and if I had my reporters hat on, I tried to be very conscious of not inserting myself, being aware of my bias. We all have them. It’s impossible to be completely unbiased but if we’re aware of it we can try to control it better. Then having to try to open a vein one day a week was a balancing act. I think I did it pretty well for a long time. But then it became more satisfying to me after I wrote my first book to speak in my own voice and to talk about my own experiences. I still try to maintain the same kind of respect and rigorous reporting that I had when I’m taking about somebody else’s tradition. I always check. I try not to speak off the top of my head. But there is something about talking about one of the most intimate things—and faith is that with people—and then reserving anything about yourself, any details. For years I would never say what flavor I was. There was a running bet among some religious leaders in Chicago as to what I might actually be. But then it just felt more honest. If I was going to be talking to people and I got to the point in my career and in the evolution of my voice where it just made sense to put it out there, too. It’s just gotten more and more out there over the years.

Pawlus: At this point, I’d love to hear your take on where journalism and religion are right now. Lillian writes for the “Christian Century,” obviously a religious magazine. You write in different journals and magazines and so forth. You have a masters in…

Falsani: Theological studies and one in journalism.

Pawlus: Right. A lot of journalists don’t have that background to bring to it, do they? There have been a lot of layoffs in the journalism business. Where do you think we’re at with all this right now? It seems like it’s more important than ever with what’s going on in the country in religion.

Falsani: Talk about a shadow side of something! Well, it’s just been a tragic few years for the fourth estate. Newspapers in particular have just been gutted. It took us a long time. I’ve been writing about religion for the mainstream media, for big Chicago papers for fifteen years. And for the first five it was like trying to get people, trying to get editors, to understand the importance of doing this particular beat well, not just covering two things or doing swap meet announcements on Fridays. Then they caught on. Then the whole clergy sex abuse thing happened with the Catholic church in the United States, which is not what we were trying to do, but it did and it was front page news. Editors stood up and paid even more attention. A lot of religion news sections were born and suddenly they were looking for specialists, people who do have that kind of training. There were many of my colleagues who covered religion around the country who did, for a time. Then as soon as newspapers took a dive, in most places—certainly there are some exceptions—religion was one of the first things that was cut.

Daniel: If there were ever a time when we need more understanding of religion this would be it. We have had some of our guests on the show talk about trying to generate more light than heat. We’ve talked about why is it that it seems like in the media it’s the extremists in religion who get all the attention and how does that work?

Falsani: Some of it is the “squeaky wheel.” It’s also that people who apply massive labels to themselves make journalists who maybe don’t have as much finesse when it comes to the subject area go, “Ok. Well, if he says he’s that, then I can use that word and it saves me about twenty-six words in between trying to explain something I don’t even understand.” And then it’s that religion, I suppose, ideally is supposed to be a good in society and so when somebody is acting like a whack-a-doodle, like the fellow down in Gainesville trying to burn Korans—that’s an anomaly or least it should be—so that does get some attention, too.

What I have seen in the last decade certainly is a lot more—I keep using the word finesse—but a finesse in the religious community itself. There was training that we did when I was first starting my career with religious leaders saying don’t be afraid when a reporter calls you. If you hide, we’re going to dig deeper. Don’t wait for the reporter to call you, call them, have a relationship. A lot of people have done that. A lot of religious leaders have done that nationally. So now there is some nuance to the reporting that there maybe wouldn’t have been ten years ago around the whole proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. You do have the extremes, but then you do have a wealth of voices in the middle and around the sides and from different traditions that wouldn’t have been there a decade ago. So that’s progress. There are just fewer of us producing the stories, unfortunately.

Pawlus: We’ve got a couple of minutes left. I want you talk a little bit about this new book that’s coming out, “Finding Community on Facebook.” A lot of people are fascinated with this idea. Your spiritual journey has led you away from the church and back to the church. I think there is a connection here with the Facebook community. Tell us a little bit about that.

Falsani: There is and I should use the caveat that if I had gone looking for faith on Facebook I don’t think I would have found it. But I went just for connecting with old friends from college and high school. It was voyeuristic: How much weight have they gained? Do they still have their hair? Who did they marry? What do their kids look like?

But then life happened and a friend of mine from college was killed in Iraq two years ago, two and a half years ago almost. I happened to find out about it on Facebook not long after it happened. I flipped open my computer and there, two seconds after, his best friend in Laguna Beach had posted that he was sad that Mark had died that day. That was the catalyst for a bunch of us who went to college together, who are now on the cusp of forty, eighteen or twenty years out of college, to sort of rediscover each other. Even some of us who had been friends all of those years rediscovered each other in a new way. In the days and weeks after Mark was killed, I want to say about a hundred of us got together in different ways and then out of that a group of twenty of us started talking on what’s called a thread, which is basically a message that goes out to twenty people because that’s what Facebook will allow you to do. You can’t have more than that. So for almost two and a half years there are twenty of us from all over the world who talk every single day, multiple times a day.

Daniel: Through that did you return to the church?

Falsani: I did and it was a friend I didn’t know two years ago who introduced me to a local church and I crept back in. Then it changed everything.

Daniel: Now you’re an Episcopalian.

Falsani: Actually, that’s my home church, but the church that we go to in California is not that but just a little different, just a cousin.

Daniel: Very good. Thank you, Cathleen.