Toni Morrison's Lorain

Description

The Essence magazine published Toni Morrison's words about various subjects in May 1995. This excerpt includes her words about single mothers and faith. Morrison became a Catholic, although her family attended St. Matthew's African Methodist Episcopal church in Lorain, Ohio.

Single Mothers

I had a very large and caring family. They were constantly in and around my life. So I never felt alone when I was raising my two sons. A single woman who is raising children is not alone if she has a family. Having relatives and friends is critical. One person alone cannot raise a child. Two people are not enough to raise a child. Children need everybody; so you must seek our everybody. (224)

A Crisis of Faith

Crisis in faith is good. The debate about faith is healthy. Recently two close cousins died, both of my brothers died, my mother died, my house burned down. Sometimes things are in disarray. My faith is always being challenged, but that is good: You discover of what you are made. It’s like having a fever.

My fevers are not as passionate as they once were. But I still have personal crises. They’re opportunities to refine what I think and what I feel and to expand it or reconfigure it.

We really have to learn to love thinking again. Not fretting, no worrying, but thinking. Life really is thrilling. But many people are unaccustomed to enjoying the problematics of life. They think life is confusing, hard, bad. Yes, life can be complicated; it can be virtually unlivable. But you can use your mind to learn, to change things and to think things through. The mind is never still. Knowledge is food for the mind, and the mind is going to learn something whether you like it or not. The point is to learn something useful, not destructive. Thinking and learning are what we are born for. (280)