Perfection

It feels good to have the second edit sent off!  Only one more to go, we trust.  Is a book ever finished?  Can it be perfect with no mistakes?  Will it offend anyone?  Inspire anyone?  Exclude anyone?  I read this quote by Oscar Wilde the other day:  "I have been correcting the proofs of my poems.  In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence.  In the afternoon I put it back again."   Does this sound like us, or what?

Remember I asked you for a suggestion of a book to read?   (I'd run out of good ones for a month or so.)  And you asked if I'd read 84 Charing Cross Road.  I asked if it was true.  I hate true, I'd rather read fiction...makes life seem not so real.   I started reading it anyway, and I love it!  Here's an entry from Helene Hanff, February 9, 1952:  I never can get interested in things that didn't happen to people who never lived.  

So, I guess lots of people will like our book, right?  And I may learn to love non-fiction after all.   Judy

Thanksgiving

"One act of thanksgiving made when things go wrong is worth a thousand
when things go well." John of the Cross

Ordinary into Reality

In the midst of warmy bags and quilts (I, Julie, also have a quilt in process) I have been reading from the Seattle Pacific University Lectio online series. Celeste Cranston offers this prayer that transports me, for just a moment, out of the ordinary into the reality of the (now, but not later!) unseen.

Gracious, powerful, personal God of baffling images, of incongruous melodies, of intimidating intimacy, I pray that you will free, restore, and baptize our imaginations so that we may catch a glimmer of your unlimited truth and grace, so that we may courageously offer both lament and praise, so that we may live into your Yahweh-shaped kingdom where all is good and all is right. In the name and power of Jesus, our prophet, priest, and king. Amen.