I started questioning the existence of God when I was a teen. Growing up in Catholic and Anglican schools taught me what believing in God might look like. But over time, I read books on other possibilities. Other religions, philosophy, and spirituality in general showed me that a belief in God had difference faces. My first young adult series, Between Worlds, aims to offer young readers a chance to explore their spirituality in the privacy of books.

What Does Spiritual Journey Mean to the Reader?

You might connect “spiritual” with the belief in a deity, multiple deities, or numerous spirits.

The usual opposite of “spiritual” is often “empirical”, meaning a belief in science that does not support belief in an unproven higher power. As a teenager raised Catholic in Ontario, I felt conflicted between the two.

I've learned that spirituality can have many meanings and doesn't have to exclude science.

What Spiritual Means to Me

Spirituality is an abstract concept: We can neither hold it nor see it, hear it nor taste it nor smell it.

Yet it exists. How? Why?

Humans cannot live alone, despite what many may wish to believe. Someone makes our clothing, grows our food, raises our livestock, and takes care of us. The cleanliness of our air relies on how clean our neighbours keep theirs, whether they are nearby or across a border. The noise or silence we experience is linked to others as well.

How do we honour these connections? How do we feel about them? How do we become a part of them?

There’s no single answer to these questions, so I created a series with two teenaged girls with very different spiritual lives.

Elisabeth’s Spiritual Journey

In Between Worlds, Elisabeth’s journey is perhaps the more expected one. She explores her beliefs and relationships to understand Jesus’ presence in her life. Whom should she turn to for guidance? Jesus, God, her parents, the minister, or her own heart?

Elisabeth cannot fathom a world without a god, even as she tries to reconcile how a loving god could allow what eventually became known as World War I to happen.

For Elisabeth, practising her Lutheran faith means following its rules and participating in her Lutheran community:

• Church calls everyone together once a week.
• Social traditions arise from religious life.
• Life’s greatest moments, from birth to death, are celebrated together.

Believing in God challenges Elisabeth to co-exist with everyone around her while following a moral compass that will eventually gain her entrance into heaven. It helps her deepen relationships not only with her family, friends, and neighbours, but with herself, too.

Juliana’s Spiritual Journey

If spirituality is about connecting with others while developing a deeper relationship with yourself, then dance is that spiritual journey for Juliana. Indeed, the first novel ends with her dancing as she gathers courage to tackle this latest chapter in her life.

Many adults today will shy away from dancing: “Oh, no, thank you. I’m going to sit down. I can’t dance.”

However, dance is community. What’s a wedding without dancing? Teenaged life without the high school dance? Rock concerts without dancers onstage? Some forms of theatre without dance?

Dance, for Juliana, takes that to a different level. As a teenager in love with dance—especially the percussion form that is tap dance—she finds connection with those around her. The transition to a new dance studio presents many problems for Juliana, including not understanding the social rules of this new group.

Juliana doesn’t pray in the religious sense of the word. Instead, she tries to deepen her relationship with herself and find answers to her problems through dance.

Spirituality Your Own Way

Most youth will embark on some kind of spiritual journey. It may only begin in their pre-teen years and take decades to conclude. Or perhaps they learn in those younger years that what they have always believed is what provides them the strength to continue in this world.

Spirituality carries a diverse range of meanings, and I wanted to write a series for pre-teens and teens that could help them work through that journey in the privacy of a book. For more information about Between Worlds, visit here.