Amen?: Questions for a God I Hope Exists

To people exhausted by hard lines and polar positions, Julia Rocchi's book is a grace-filled invitation into radical rest.
—Karen Wright Marsh, Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith

All her life, Julia Rocchi has searched for both the stillness and community that would connect her with something real and powerful, something like God. But religion, often consumed by its certainties, sometimes fails us. We want to find a new way. Could it be that faith is instead a conversation we carry on in questions?

From a place of searching faith comes Amen?, a collection of prayers and essays for practicing penitents and devoted doubters. With fresh imagery and prose to help you pause, this book encourages our hesitant hopes and welcomes us to admit doubt, invite joy, and grapple with mystery. From Julia's story about learning her brother was an atheist to her prayer about envisioning the love of her life, and from her reflection on trying (and failing) to be a social justice warrior to her experience waking up laughing, you'll see what happens when we stop, listen, and set a table for the questions.

Amen? is an engaging, empathetic rumination of the nature of belief-and its reverberations in the everyday-that offers readers comfort, challenge, and release on their quests to encounter God.

Julia Rocchi writes prose, poetry, prayers, and a lot of thank-you notes. With an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University, she has garnered multiple story publications and honors, including First Place in the Saturday Evening Post's Great American Fiction Contest. Julia also works in nonprofit marketing, facilitates gatherings, and performs improv comedy. As an ENFJ, Enneagram 2, and Cancer sign, she's never met a personality indicator she disagreed with. Julia lives with her family in Arlington, Virginia. Visit juliarocchi.com to follow her on her blog or on social media.