Take a Peek

I've been kind of quiet in the blogosphere lately. So many things going on here.

In the past week, I wrote (and delivered) a talk called A Recorder, A Drawer and Kalashnikovs: Revisiting Grace. I thank Lynet for inspiring me. The passage I had to speak on was assigned, but it ended up converging quite nicely with some things we were discussing over on Elliptica (way back in December... glad you are patient, Lynet!).

Almost the entire week, while I was trying to get the talk done, I was still struggling with sadness. I find it very difficult to write when I'm down.

Then the weekend brought a strange mix of sorrows... the death of a friend's newborn grandbaby, a friend who was in a near-fatal accident, and the discovery that yet another of our congregants has cancer. Somehow in the midst of all this, I had been blessed with a trip to Graymoor Retreat Center... a trip I had been fussing over, kind of the way an infant sometimes fusses when it needs to nursed but instead flails around, hitting and screaming (not understanding there's milk just within reach).

I went to Graymoor and came away feeling a deep sense of gratitude. There, I wrote three pieces that I ended up sharing with the retreat group, at their request...

Against the Cedar
Holy Spirit Chapel
Centerpiece

Now I'm tired. So please don't mind if I curl up in the sun and take a little nap.


Old Shutter photo, by J Barkat. Used with permission.

Writing our Childhoods

Today I had to speak on a verse from Ephesians 5, "therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children." One of the stories I told in this talk, Beloved Child, gives a little more flesh to a hard incident I mention in Stone Crossings.

That's part of the beauty of writing for different times and places. We can move in at different angles, in different lights. We can take a story from our past and find new pieces to share.

So we find that Flannery O'Connor was right: anyone who survived his childhood has enough material to write about for a lifetime. We simply need to put a new twist on the old, old stories.


Child on the Path photo, by J Barkat. Used by permission. O'Connor reference is from Mystery and Manners, p.84. Seedlings Invitation: If you write a post related to this post and Link It Back Here, let me know and I'll link to yours.