Meg Tilly: A Spirituality of Courage and Hope

My Intro to Meg Tilly: Agnes of God

I first experienced Meg Tilly via her Golden Globe winning onscreen portrayal of an enigmatic young nun named Sister Agnes (Agnes of God, 1985). Her mysterious encounters with God trigger investigator Dr. Martha Livingstone (Jane Fonda) into a spiritual crisis which may just lead her back to faith. The providential interface between Agnes’ spirituality and Livingstone’s cynicism impacted me. It mirrored my own internal struggles as a young theology student whose heart and head were plagued by a serious disconnect. 

Novels: 

Twenty years later, it’s happening again. Meg Tilly left the acting trade to pick up the novelist’s pen. I’ve only just discovered her body of work and I’m pleased to say that I have not emerged unscathed. In each of her first three books—Singing Songs, Gemma and Porcupine—we hear the authentic voice and feel the true heart of courageous young girls who reflect some aspect of Tilly’s reality. The stories reveal an acquaintance with grief and fight and hope that are deeper than fiction. They have the capacity to heal.

Singing Songs: Therapeutic Uses 

According to Meg’s blog (www.officialmegtilly.com), her first book, Singing Songs, accesses memories of her childhood (age 5-7) through the voice of Anna. This little girl fast became my hero. Written in first person, we follow Anna’s reflections through several years of hilarious joy (the creation of “poo pies”) and horrendous pain (including molestation). Her child-logic gives us a window into the surprising ways that children process, cope with and rise to face the dysfunctional world around them. 

Singing Songs is an unheard of recipe of graphic and sensitive material that I have adopted for therapeutic use with adults in search of healing for their own childhood traumas. The response I hear is, “This is my story. I was Anna…” The active ingredient in this written prescription is that Anna walks the reader through their denial into a place of strength and hope. 

With their permission, two women that were assigned the book respond below from the perspective of their healing journey. The first is Heidi, who recently found a wounded inner child called “Little Heidi.” 

The timing of last week’s first real connection with this little girl inside (which is a miracle, a real life miracle) and you meeting Meg and sharing her book is quite the timing.

The amazing thing brad is, Little Heidi loves Anna and Katie and Jimmie. Listening to them and watching them, she gets feeling sick inside at times, but she isn't scared and it doesn't make her want to hide again. And she laughs at other times. That's unbelievable for her. I think somehow Anna is part of the doorway for Heidi. I don't know how else to explain it

 You know, it seems so weird because in so many ways this feels odd—odd that I am just now starting over in a sense, while the rest of me feels so grown up. Singing Songs has helped the grown part of me interact with the little me. And not just that, but I also see the interaction between Heidi and Anna, which is helping little Heidi to begin to live as she used to. To remember what little girls are like; to remember what she was like. Adults don't often understand little children so well and I don't think Big Heidi did either. We've forgotten. So the timing was so necessary for both big me and little me. We both needed this to help each other.

 Hugs, Heidi

 The second is from the point of view of a dissociative child-part named “Eve”[i] who told me that she read Singing Songs while “sitting on Jesus’ lap”).

Yup, we finished the book.
I loved most of it.
Some of it made me crawl under Jesus armpit.
It made me remember things I didn't even know happened to me.
I'm glad you are there with me cause I really do need you.
I liked all the funny parts of the book.
I think Anna in the book is very strong.
I wish I was that strong like her
Maybe I'm a little bit like her, do you think?
I think tomorrow I will take a peek in Gemma, just to look.

Love, Eve

Gemma: Projected God Images

[* not appropriate for children under 15]

Eve refers to Meg’s second book, Gemma, which takes Singing Songs to another level. In the first half of the story, Gemma, a 12-year old girl, is taken by a predator on an extended cross-country road-trip of sexual and physical abuse. The brave young girl survives by the magnificent use of her vivid imagination. The story alternates between Gemma’s point of view and that of the perpetrator. For Tilly, this must have been an enormously courageous emotional and literary exercise. In the second half of the book—and it required a full 50% of the pages—we read of Gemma’s healing journey in the context of a safe home. She learns the power of unconditional love to restore a shattered person. The climax of the story had me on pins and needles and then left me in heart-changing tears, because I know this story—this real story.

One of the great contributions of Gemma was in contrasting the conceptions and projections of God between the little girl and her abuser. Gemma knows a God who loves her and cares for her:

 And just when I give up hope, and this is how I know there is a God, just when I feel the absolute bleakest, I feel a gentle hand come to rest on my back, and I’m breakin, I’m breakin into a million pieces, but I feel this hand, Cindy’s hand, and it’s like it’s filled with light, it’s calm and serene, like a cool breeze when you got a fever.

 And it guides the hurricane outa my body.

Compare that to the god that Hazen (the villain) believes in, according to this internal rant after he’s met with a priest:

 F*** that! This man doesn’t know God! Doesn’t know what he’s talking about! F***ing forgiveness? Please! God doesn’t believe in forgiveness. He believes in brimstone, fire, vengeance, and absolute, total destruction! Jesus Christ, hasn’t the guy even read the f***ing Bible? It’s full of mayhem and murder, floods and plagues. He even has a few messed-up dudes killing their own families, children. He asks them to do this, to show their faith! And they do.

 And what about hell? What about that? The little pansy couldn’t explain that away, no matter how many flowery words he used! No way! No way to misconstrue that one. Forgiveness? Come on! God has you descending to the fiery pits of hell for all eternity, for some minor mistake or another!

F*** forgiveness! That’s not God’s way! Screw forgiveness! He’s gonna kill the little slut. Kill the little two-faced bitch that got him into this mess in the first place. Kill her nice and slow.

 We would do well to ponder our own version of God, the lenses with which we view him and the behaviours that flow from that image. Who is our God? Where did we get him? What is God really like? I think he’s like Gemma’s God—the God who forgives and helps us to forgive.

 Porcupine: A Time to Fight; A Time to Let Go

For those who find Singing Songs or Gemma too graphic, but want to share Meg Tilly’s courage and hope with the YA (young adult) crowd, her latest novel, Porcupine, is perfect. It’s the story of a young girl named Jack who must deal with the grief of losing her father to the war in Afghanistan. We follow the irrepressible Jack and her younger siblings from her maritime home to a life at great-grandmother’s farm in Alberta.

This astounding novel will guide the young (and not so young) reader through the emotional crises of loss and grief, unexpected changes such as moving and death, and the pain of abandonment, loneliness, learning difficulties and bullying (just a sampling). Porcupine will be required reading in my home, assisting me in parenting my youngest son through some recent disappointments.

Porcupine once again highlights Tilly’s profound gift at thinking and feeling at the level of her characters. We watch and learn from the inside how a young person might discover when to fight and when to let go, when to stand up and when to stand down, when to take space and where to make space. All this comes to a stunning, picturesque finale that left me smiling with wonder and impatiently tapping my fingers as I wait for Meg’s next book, “Lucky”.

Meeting Meg

I understand that reviews, however positive, ought not to be gushy. Forgive me, but it gets worse. Imagine my delight when my friend Brita called to share that Meg had taken time to go out for lunch with her and to coach her through some breakthroughs in her own upcoming novel.[ii] Brita suggested that I pop into the Surrey writers’ conference where I could meet Meg in person at the book-signing event. She assured me that I would find her as “wide” (referring to Meg’s free and expansive spirit) as her books.

Indeed, I was not disappointed! Briefly, I believe that some folks have hearts big enough to fill a large room and that those who enter will be treated to a taste of that person’s predominant virtues. What I felt immediately even as I entered the room was a light of hope emanating from Meg and warming the whole place. There’s a genuine kindness to her that is so attractive that I felt like I wanted to just sit at her feet for a while. It’s obvious to me why her bookstore reading events are so successful. You get the sense she enjoys being herself and radiating her hard-won hope to others. 

As an aside, I’ve become a regular visitor to her blog, where she freely shares her heart and her favourite recipes. With Brita’s direction, I even had a hand in making Meg’s marvelous beef stroganoff. The blog is a great venue for readers to enjoy Meg's inspiring thoughts while preserving her family's privacy. I'm thankful for this little window into such a generous life.

 

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[i] You can read more about Eve in her own words in Kissing the Leper by Brad Jersak (Fresh Wind Press).

[ii] Nailed by Brita Miko. A modern-day version of the OT book of Hosea, set in Vancouver's East End.

Comments

[adit]

What an excellent review! I suspect that if it were possible, these books could be translated into gold considering the process that is required.
Blessings to you all!