Core beliefs, trite and obvious

What would you say if asked to state "the central belief" of your life? "I believe in God"? "Love"? "Work"?

Do you believe, in the words of wall posters, that for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows -- and that children are our future? Would you echo popular songs and proclaim your faith in miracles, the impossible -- or old dogs, children and watermelon wine? Or would you say what millions of Americans repeat each Sunday: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty ..."?

Since 2005, Jay Allison has been asking famous and unheralded Americans to answer that question through 500-word essays broadcast on National Public Radio. Once again, he has collected 75 of them for a book, "This I Believe II" -- a $23 production of This I Believe Inc.

Here's a sample:

• "I believe in optimism."
• "I believe it's important to accept people for who they are."
• "I believe in intuition."
• "I believe that Christmas music can touch the spirit."

Are you thinking, "I believe I'm going to spit up in the back of my throat, just a little bit?"

Not one of these beliefs would cause Mom to bobble an apple pie, even if she were waving an American flag frantically with her other hand while standing on the hood of a Chevy.

It's hard to get excited by such insights, even when Isabel Legarda, a Massachusetts physician, tells us twice -- three times if you count her title -- "Every person is precious."

Other proclamations are just embarrassing: "I believe that as long as I keep baking, my grandmother hasn't really gone. I believe baking is the best way for me to express love for my people in the present, and honor the people of my past, all in one batch." Reading that, one marvels at the limited imagination of a theology student who doesn't wonder if love, at the level of a core belief, asks more of us than a red velvet cake.

To keep the blushing to a minimum, I'll move briskly past essays that begin "I believe in semipermanent hair dye" and "I believe in my dog."

In his introduction, Allison says the essays are "more like prayers than sermons." But "This I Believe II," with the pretentious liturgical inversion in the title, encourages sermonizing.

"You might not make it to the top, but if you are doing what you love, there is much more happiness than being rich or famous," says Tony Hawk, the rich and famous skateboarder, turning his life into a sermon -- or a fortune cookie.

Once you reduce the complexities of your being to a moral, everything that complicates the moral is tossed out the window, and life itself becomes untrue to actual living.

Smugness too is a problem: "Me, on the other hand, I'm cool! Why do I know that? Because I sleep well at night, and I work with people who apparently like to work with me," declares jazz musician Christian McBride.

These mini-essays usually begin with a statement of faith ("I believe in telling children the truth"), allude vaguely to times before that revelation, and end with vague gestures to how that insight has improved their lives. But behind the soft focus one senses complicated and interesting stories that resist the meanings the tellers have clamped on them.

When Betsy Chalmers writes "I believe in faithfulness," I think, "Most of us do, even those who don't practice it." When she reveals she's been faithful to a husband who's been in prison for over 30 years, I perk up.

But when she says he was convicted of a violent crime and thus "failed himself, his family, his wife, and his future," I can't square that with her later assertion that "Somewhere in here I think I'm supposed to say I believe my husband is innocent." Well, does she or doesn't she? What did he do, or not do? And what did it cost her to come to the cloying moral, "I choose to live it [life] by being faithful. This brings me peace, this brings me joy, this keeps me aware of my husband"? Can't we glimpse a more interesting, untold story?

The most interesting essays are written by people educated to think about feelings. Sister Helen Prejean doesn't say much about being a spiritual counselor of death row convicts, but when she writes, "I watch what I do to see what I really believe," one hears someone who monitors herself so her actions and her deepest beliefs become the same thing. Father Richard Rohr says "I believe in mystery and multiplicity," and then explains how he came to accept spiritual ambiguities.

It's not just clergy. The singer Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who according to his bio note "studied metaphysics at an ashram," says, "I did my best to cultivate belief but could only come up with what Alan Watts called 'a belief in belief.'" His life of bohemian excess ultimately led him to a serious spiritual understanding. "The drugs, the sex, the alcohol: It sounds like a lot of fun -- that is, if you don't figure in the remorseful hangovers, the depression, or the loneliness that is both the cause and the effect of the whole vicious cycle." The solution: Caring for others makes them care for you.

Instead of 75 short essays on banalities like "I believe in integrity," I'd rather read Jimmy Dale telling us a lot more about the good times and the bad, and Betsy Chalmers explaining what being faithful to an imprisoned felon has cost her and how that faith has been challenged.

Core beliefs deserve more than 500 words.