God’s Answers Neale Walsch Asked God Questions - And He Says He Responded With A Best Seller

The Lord and the book-buying public move in mysterious ways.

Just ask Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling “Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book I.”

Several years ago, in a moment of despair, he composed an angry letter to the Almighty. And he says God responded with an outpouring of divine wisdom and advice.

Walsch contends that, over a threeyear period, he wrote down God’s colloquial answers to his questions about life, love and relationships. “I was not writing so much as taking dictation,” Walsch said.

The rest is, as they say, publishing history. “Conversations” was No. 5 on The New York Times nonfiction best-sellers list last week.

Walsch will be giving a lecture in Spokane on Wednesday.

The 53-year-old former radio talk show host and public relations/ marketing specialist lives just north of Ashland, Ore. He has been to Spokane before, but it’s been a few years.

His book is to be published in 19 languages. Still, he knows some consider him a fraud.

“Skepticism and praise are both irrelevant,” he said in a telephone interview. “All that’s relevant is an individual’s experience of the material.”

The book offers what Walsch says are God’s answers to questions on topics ranging from the secret of life (“Life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation”) to sex (“Sex is joy, and many of you have made sex everything else but”).

“Conversations” suggests that the way to glimpse heaven begins with looking inward.

It does not offer a ringing endorsement of the role of churches and clergy.

Walsch insisted that the book’s sales amazed him at first. But now he says he doesn’t think there’s any puzzle about why the 211-page volume has been a hit.

“There’s a great hunger in the world right now for deeper understandings and greater clarity surrounding the whole issue of the role that God plays in our lives,” he said.

He rejects the label some have attached to him - “New Age guru.”

“I see myself as a messenger bringing forth a great truth about God and the world,” he said.

He playfully likened this experience to getting to play first base for the New York Yankees.

Walsch emphasizes that anyone can communicate with God, a belief he said he shares whenever people ask him to approach deity on their behalf.

“They can ask their own questions and receive their own answers, which, of course, is the whole point of the book,” he said.

He said he has heard from hundreds of people who have had similar Q-and-A exchanges with God.

Volume two of “Conversations” is due out in May.

The first book already has been reproduced on audio tape, with actors Ed Asner and Ellen Burstyn as well as a child reading what Walsch claims are God’s answers.

Walsch said he hasn’t had to deal with much outright hostility from those who doubt the authenticity of his story.

“It’s very rare,” he said. “At public appearances, I think people see that I’m pretty much a harmless fellow. I don’t think I generate a great deal of vociferous opposition.”

He now spends about 30 weeks out of the year on the lecture circuit.

He said he doesn’t mind answering questions about his unusual literary collaboration. “No inquiry is invalid and I don’t find myself coming to a place of impatience with inquiries that are honestly placed,” he said.

In any case, Walsch is not embarrassed about his recent success.

“One presumes that when God decides to write a book, it’s going to be a best seller.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Jacket cover illustration by Louis Jones

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LECTURE Neale Donald Walsch will give a lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the downtown Spokane Red Lion hotel. Tickets are $25 in advance. Call 624-1873.