I left there, but I'm not here yet.

"To leave one's country to go
and live in another country
in inferior conditions,
that is, without a safety net
and without recourse of return
to one's native land,
this seems to me to be the last great
human adventure.

I have to explain that people don't eat
the same food,
they don't dress
in the same manner,
they don't dance to the same rhythms,
they don't have the same smells
or the same accents,
and they certainly don't dream
the same way,
but it's up to me to adapt.

I have to explain it all in a language
that is not the one my mother speaks.
That's what traveling means.

[...]

I left there,
but I'm not
here yet.
Be patient, young man, it's only been a year.

I can't tell you
exactly when this city
ceased being a foreign city
for me.
Perhaps when I stopped looking at it."

Dany Laferrière, A Drifting Year (original French version: Chronique de la dérive douce)

I saved this excerpt as a draft in Blogger exactly 1 year and 1 day ago. About two weeks before we arrived in Montreal. While I was packing up my office in our house in Germany, taking notes on this novel for my dissertation.

Laferrière's writing is beautiful and painful, and I knew it would describe my experience in the year to come. I haven't opened Blogger in a year. But I knew this excerpt was here, waiting.

The first month in Montreal, I truly didn't have time to think much less blog or reflect. Each evening was spent apartment hunting, trying to figure out where to buy groceries, and clothes, and school supplies. And find a school for my son at all.

In the fall, I thought about blogging a little. But could only think of all the comparisons I would make between Montreal and Konstanz, Quebec and Germany, North American and European life and cultural norms. How some readers would laugh and nod in agreement. And others would be offended and think, "go back where you came from!"

Then the winter rolled in and with it all kinds of struggles. Finding our feet in my old-new land has been challenging. I had no desire to process it all on the internet. We went to far-away trusted friends and mentors for counsel. We changed our minds about some things. We made some mistakes. We learned. We clung to God alone. Not even close friends or church to cling to now.

We bought our first home, a tiny urban condo smaller than the last 2 homes we've had. Just a bit bigger than the 1-bedroom half-basement that housed us for the first 5 years of our marriage. I've plugged away at my dissertation in the midst of it all, and the end is in sight. My son learned to ride a bike, and understand French, and sing in Spanish. My daughter went from a baby to a fiercely independent child, diaper-free and talking a blue streak. We've made a surprisingly large network of contacts in different neighbourhoods, churches, schools. We've made some decisions, coming back to our true selves and defining our core values.

These last few months, I've realized I miss writing, and am starting to feel free enough to do it again in this space.

I write this on the eve of our first trip back "home" to that beautiful lake and city that nurtured us for 9 years. Where we got engaged, and grew up, and learned to open up in community. City of our children's births.

I guess you could say our feet have found the ground now in Montreal.
When we get back, they can start to grow roots.

Be patient, it's only been a year.

On why children are an asset to my academic career

I have spent hours this week filling out a grant application (the academic's "hobby") for the rest of my Ph.D. program. The duration of the grant (bottom line: how much money one could receive) is determined based on how many months of full-time doctoral studies one has already done. If you ever studied part-time or had something delay your program of study, you have to prove it. I was allotted a maximum of half a page to explain my unconventional doctoral schedule encompassing two babies and a half-year working as an Assistant Professor which enable me to still qualify for this grant. I wrote it and explained, no big deal. 

But I felt strange calling my children a "special circumstance that has interrupted or delayed my Ph.D."

I have often said that my children have helped me work more effectively, and had other academic parents nod in agreement. I now have limited windows of work time, and so I put my head down and concentrate. I get a lot done. Rarely do I check social media or do anything non-work related during work time. Now that I work most days from my home office, I ignore the housework that could be done, or the bed that could be napped in (3 years of rarely sleeping through the night and counting!) My work time is invaluable to me, and I want to honour my boss, the German taxpayers funding my scholarship, and the One who created work and gave me the capacity to take pleasure in it.

I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man. Ecclesiastes 3: 12-13

I have the luxury of spending about half of my day in the quiet of my office (introverts who are mothers of young children say amen). I love what I do, but I also love standing up, using the 8 minute walk to Kindergarten to clear my head and shake out the kinks in my mouse-clicking arm. I relish picking up my children: it takes a second for their gaze to rest on me and make the click of recognition in their busy little minds and bodies. A smile bursts onto my toddler's face as she wiggles and squeals and hurls her way toward me. My rambunctious three year old always greets me the same way: no smile, no words, he hurtles headlong towards me and tackles my legs. 

Before I had kids, I could sit up all evening researching for my M.A. if I wanted to. I could write all night if the words were flowing and sleep some other time. Back then my husband and I were both students, and we often had meals at strange times, or ate bread or cereal while we worked evenings/nights/weekends - whatever needed to be done, whatever suited us. Obviously, we don't work like this anymore. We love to spend as much awake-time with the kids as possible, so our children help us to be as effective and efficient with our work time as possible. We still tend to go to bed too late, but no matter what we'll be awake at 6 and the morning routines will start again. 

Children give rhythm and routine to our days. When I was home during two winters with my two newborns, with no appointments, classes or jobs forcing me to be somewhere at a certain time, I languished. I thrive on deadlines and a bit of structure, thus I love our new Kindergarten-dictated routines. The drop off and pick up times provide us with a nice framework to organize our day around. I know my time is limited, which is a motivator and a certain freedom in itself.

Do children get in the way of my career? Of course, I have fewer hours to work than a doctoral student with no children. Of course, I took time off with my newborns that someone who didn't have babies did not take off. I choose to rarely travel to conferences or workshops in other cities while my kids are so young (which is also a plus, as I am very discerning about what is really worth going to, and which conferences are the best fit for my research). However, the bottom line is that I probably I would have finished my Ph.D. sooner and published more articles if I didn't have children. 

Yet they are my blessing, my very great reward.

I do not regret the maternity leave I took with my babies for an instant. I do not sigh with frustration when I have to interrupt the flow of ideas that are finally getting somewhere because it is time to pick up my children. My afternoons with them, whether filled with joyful giggles and adorable glances, or tired tears and disobedience, are priceless. I am their mama and want to be with them. They inspire me. They refresh me. They give life perspective. They save me from my workaholic tendencies. 

As an academic and an introvert, I can tend towards reflecting, analyzing, reading, journalling: that is, living very much inside my own mind. In the current season in which I am not teaching, just writing, writing, writing my dissertation, my kids help me get outside my head and into the tangible world of play-dough and a pile of pillows masquerading as a bear cave. The tactile world of angel-baby-hair and velvety soft skin, of wet bed sheets and scrubbing jam off the floor on hands and knees. Of one-minute editions of "Noah and the people who make fun of him" and "Jonah and the whale who swallows him," reenacted for the hundredth time. The world of foggy-crisp air filling our lungs on our 8 a.m. walk. The world in which my son exclaims gleefully "Look!" while I put on his sister's shoes; I follow his finger and see the pink-tinged sunrise sky just now breaking, and we thank the One who painted it (and I thank God for the wonder in my little boy's eyes). The world of sidewalk chalk-covered hands and a big brother sharing his Kindercappuccino with his sister. The soothing routine of sorting clean laundry, the sense of accomplishment at seeing tiny socks matched and clean clothes provided, order restored.

With or without the grant, I'll keep proclaiming that children are an asset to academic careers. And they are my heritage, my blessing, my very great reward.  

The mystery and drama of the everyday extraordinary

Narrative helps us have eyes to see each other.

I love how author Alix Ohlin, in this post about her collection of short stories Signs and Wonders, explains how poignant and fitting a short story can be as a means of exploring our everyday lives and connecting to people.

In the stories I write, the people tend to be flawed, to make or have made mistakes -- because I think that's true of most of us. Nobody's perfect all the time, after all, and if they were, we'd have no need to tell stories about them. Real people struggle to connect with the people around them, even those they love the most.

And that's my main theme as a writer: the necessity and difficulty of the connections between people, how they sometimes break, how they can be sustained. I'm fascinated by the problems we have relating to other people -- their agendas, their emotional histories, their inner lives -- even as we crave intimacy with them.

There's something about a short story that is perfectly suited to exploring the mystery and drama of what we call, misleadingly I think, "ordinary life." (Because nobody's life is ordinary when you look at it closely.) In a short story, you don't usually cover a massive span of time or multiple generations of a family, say, the way a novel does. You can, however, do justice to the small moments that somehow become turning points in people's lives.

Our creative geniuses are looking for stories to come out of the fabric of our church. I hope this sets a few minds humming. We can use story, our stories, our creative stories, to connect to the real, raw, everyday extraordinary, to tell the greater Story.

How studying literature helps you change the world

"A B.A./M.A./Ph.D. in English? What are you going to do with that?"* 

I've heard variations on this theme. Dave Ramsey, for all his very helpful and practical financial advice, rails against doing a degree in something as asinine as literature on his radio show. Literature isn't useful, you say?  

Knowing how to read, how to intelligently engage with a text (and texts are all around us), how to express your ideas coherently in written and oral form, think critically, engage with culture, explore the struggles and inner lives of characters who are just like the people in the world around you...these are just a few of the benefits of doing a degree in English lit. (Or Québécois, or German, or Hindi literature, of course.) I admit, a degree in literature is not a surefire road to riches, but the skills one learns when reading and studying literature can be used in any career (i.e. right-hand man to a king) and are immensely helpful to anyone who wants to understand, impact and, dare I say it, "change" the world around them. 

Here a brief video about the research of Prof. Dr. Linda Hutcheon (University of Toronto) who will be coming to a conference we are hosting in Konstanz in September, on why an English degree helps you in every career:

For local academic types, she'll be giving an open lecture on September 18, 16:30 in the Audimax entitled "From Reader Response to Reader Response-Ability."

*Note this is not a direct quote from Dave Ramsey, just a typical sentence I have heard several times from various people. And similar to some things I've heard on his podcast :-)

My first publication, unearthed!

This week at my parents' house on the farm in southwestern Ontario, I have been sorting (yet again) my old stuff. School days memorabilia, camp photo albums, journal upon journal full of pre-teen and teenage angst, old trophies, stuffed animals circa 1984. Every few years I have gone through my stash, reducing more and more each time as distance makes the bonds weaker and the necessities of an international life fills my parents' recycling bin. I snapped a few phone photos of my budding authorial self. 

My first publication, unearthed!

My first published work: poem? Short short story? Anecdote?

An ode to my big brother...

Young Author's Conferences were a highlight of my childhood

And finally, a public service announcement:

The Blog Backstory

I'm new to blogging. 

The nudge came while on a walk after a particularly stimulating Sunday in church back in November (2012). Start a blog to force me to write regularly and - if I'm brave enough - actually tell people about it. I always wanted to be a writer, writing reams and reams of stories when I was a child, easily maxing out the 100 points we had to earn for Writer's Workshop at school. (I wrote 20+ page stories for about 40 points while some classmates wrote "advertisements" and "recipes" repeatedly for 5 points a pop. Chacun son goût.) My favourite character on The West Wing (best TV show of all time) was Sam Seaborn, speechwriter to the President, a secret fantasy career of mine. I'll admit it: I actually settled on Political Science as one of my two majors in my first year at university because of an episode of the West Wing. (Perhaps not surprising that basing your choice of career on an idealized Hollywood television program is not setting you up for a win. Although I still love following politics, just not mathematically analyzing them.) 

A pic of Sam Seaborn. Why not?

It seems logical from that summary of my childhood passion for writing (and reading British classics my brother brought home from uni) that I should study literature, however I came to do my Ph.D. in literature in a roundabout way. I've been writing and proofreading scholarly articles and books for years, but it feels good to have another outlet for other thoughts.

The idea of blogging freaked me out in several ways. I started reading a few blogs in the winter of 2010-11, after our first child was born and I found myself at home, breastfeeding and holding the baby for long periods, but with my mind free to roam and also a loneliness from being at home so much. (It is no mystery why so-called mommy blogs are so popular/prolific. Moms of babies and toddlers are desperate for contact with the outside world and mind-food.)  I found several blogs that I loved, and which gave me new ideas about all range of matters. But the whole mommy-blog scene, and the often negative-critical-soapbox-Christian-opinion-blogs in North America made me very hesitant to start one of my own. Among my friends in Germany, few read blogs and I don't think anyone I know has one.

Another thing that freaked me out was sharing my life, my thoughts, my quivering, vulnerable creative efforts, openly and publicly with the Whole Wide World. Even scarier, showing it to people who actually know me.  (At first I didn't post it on FB for fear that everyone I know might read it.) The possibility that your in-laws or your neighbour or your boss could read it are legitimate threats. Which adds to the thrill, the bravery required and the honesty. So far, I'm loving it. It totally scares me still, but a month of blogging is already stirring up more creativity in me than the intervening 13 years since OAC Writer's Craft. And so far, it's a lot of fun.

I didn't actually act on the nudge to start this blog until 7 months later, as is obvious from the links to previous posts over there --->. There were more nudges and prompts, so I finally just threw myself into it, screw the terrible layout and colour scheme. (Help me, please, designer and programmer friends!) I just want to write. To fan into flame the gifts within me. To throw my shoulders back, look you in the eye and declare: I am a writer.

A day after I started, my husband reminded me that I actually had a blog before. I had totally forgotten this fact. How bizarre, to totally blank out on something of that nature. I was tickled to discover this blog still exists online! So if anyone wants to read the (sometimes hilarious, sometimes embarrassing) musings of a much younger me about my early days of living in Germany and adjusting to life here, go to JoyIsMyMiddleName. 

Narrative Saves Lives

So there is a new "narrative mapping" tool out there, touted as the "new instagram for writers." You (may have) heard it here first.

Story + maps = me happy! 

A lot of my research has to do with concepts of place and space and how the spaces we inhabit shape us and we shape them, and how all of this is represented in fiction. (I am working on my doctoral dissertation in North American literature and cultural studies, specifically focusing on comparative English-Canadian and Québécois fiction.) These ideas can seem very abstract, or even "obvious," to the uninitiated. ("You are writing an entire book about 'the North?'" Eyes glaze over.) I have always had trouble wrapping my mind around some philosophical concepts, and I am thankful for those scholars who have summed up and deconstructed Lefebvre, Soja and Bhabha for the rest of us.

It took me a long time to decide to pursue a Master's degree in literature because I struggled with thoughts that it wasn't "important enough." (I started in 2008 and finished my final oral exam in 2010, the day before my maternity leave with our first child began.) I always wanted to make a difference in the world, to do something of eternal value. I had a five-year break between finishing my Bachelor's degree (from U of T while living in Quebec, another story) and starting my Master. During those intervening years I got to travel and volunteer at two Bible schools in Austria and Greece, met the man of my dreams (and beyond what I had on my little checklist), got married and settled in Konstanz. I started, then stopped, another M.A. program that wasn't for me. (In Toronto, we used words and books to study political science, not the statistics and SPSS of the KN school of public policy and management! Numbers are not my friend.) Getting over the shock of not succeeding in my studies for the first time was a major life lesson in not putting my self-worth in what I do and achieve, but who I am in Christ.

I had often felt divided, pulled between a career in academia and serving in "ministry." I knew doing an M.A. would take time and hard work and thus would leave less time to be directly invested in other things. A desire to learn, research, study and write has been inside of me since I was an embryo (or, as we tell our son when he asks where he was when we got married, or when mommy lived in Canada, since I was "in God's thoughts, but not on Earth yet.")

So back in 2006-08, I took a long time to decide to do an M.A. in literature. My husband has always encouraged me, he has always supported me in chasing my dreams and fulfilling my potential. Finally, I found encouragement in Daniel's story. Yes, that guy with the lions, though not that part specifically. Daniel the man God used greatly in a foreign kingdom to have a place of influence in society, he did a B.A. in literature and cultural studies (check it out.) Good enough for an OT prophet, good enough for me. But before this epiphany, I struggled with thoughts that literature didn't "really matter." I mean, this isn't medicine, it isn't going to save someone's life. 

Or could it?

Could narrative save someone's life? Could telling a story, and telling it well, actually give hope to someone in the pit of despair? Actually resonate with a stranger on the other side of the planet and make them feel less alone? Could it shine light on the evils of forced sex slavery, motivate just one person to kick up a fuss, to spread awareness, to raise funds, to facilitate freedom for a victim? Could narrative literally save the life of a 13 year old girl who is at this very moment locked in a dirty room near Hamburg's port, handcuffed and brutalized up to 40 times a day?

Hot tears burn my eyes as I write these words but they must be written. I must tell their stories.

Freedom starts with us.

Join me in the fight against human trafficking, won't you? To learn more about the problem and see how you can be part of the solution go to the A21 Campaign, whose goal is abolish the injustice of human trafficking and sex slavery in the 21st century. They are on the ground in several European source and destination countries, working to rescue and rehabilitate victims as well as prosecuting perpetrators. Join us in spreading freedom in Europe. It isn't just happening “over there,” it happens here. In our city, our country. Freedom starts with us.

Calling All Artists: A manifesto for the forgotten artists, the hidden writers and the wannabe poets

This is a call for all those who say “I’m not an artist” with a flutter of doubt in their bellies, a twinge of remorse on their lips, a longing in their hearts.

This is a call for all the writers who have gotten so busy with kids and career, paying the bills and handing in assignments that they haven’t written a story in years. For the poets who write on their lunch breaks because it’s the only way they know how to connect to God when life seems to be so dark. For those who can barely remember a time of creativity before the blackness of depression blotted it out.

This is a call for all of us who were terrified of art class, terrified to try and fail. For all of us who labeled ourselves “I’m not good at art” or “I can’t do it”. For those of us who can’t draw beyond a stick figure but who love to play with words until a sentence rings true, the clearest of beauties.

This is a call for those who have squirreled away their writing in journals, their sketches in notebooks, their paintings under their beds. For those who have never dared to show their work to anyone.

This is a call for the sculptors and the painters, the doodlers and the sketchers. For those who can’t keep their minds on the speaker unless their pen is on the paper.

This is a call for the mamas and the engineers, the salesmen and the papas, the teachers and the mechanics, the office workers and the students, the owners and the renters, who used to write stories, who used to paint pictures, who used to invent songs. For all the kids with the big imaginations who grew up, who got practical and realistic, who got a job, a career, a debt and forgot. For those who forgot the rush of delight in creating something beautiful, something from your soul, something just for you, or to give away.

This is a call for those of us who grew up, who got busy, who forgot.

This is a call to creativity.

A call to cast off the negations you spoke over your own life, the can’ts, shouldn’ts, couldn’ts. A call to say you are an artist. To say “I am a writer” or a poet, or a painter, or a sculptor. To say it with your shoulders back, your chin up, looking the world in the eye. This is a call to pick up the pencil, to start scratching the soil and to fertilize the seed within you. Because there is a field here, a big, open, expansive field in the sunshine where all kinds of seeds can be planted, where all of our sprouts can grow up together into an abundant crop. Your seed is welcome in this field. We can pull out the weeds around each other, make way for the healing rains and let the wind of His Spirit ruffle our branches. As our roots plunge down deeper and our stems get stronger, we’ll start to bear fruit. And we’ll fill a feasting table with the fruits of our creativity, right in the middle of this field, a heavy-laden table for others to sit down and partake of the bounty. 

Photo credits: Creative Team Night @hillsonggermany via Nine Köpfer @ Enka Photos

Of mixed media and dreams remembered and a seat at a feasting table

I saw it on the shelf while doing crunches on the living room carpet. 

I had just come in from a Sunday-night run - my best yet since giving birth to our second child about 9 months ago, spurred on by the need to outrun the mosquitoes dive-bombing into my flailing arms and legs. If you're like me you need some motivation to pick up the pace, and preserving my lifeblood is motivation enough for me.

Also if you're like me, you don't notice the things on your walls/shelves/tables much after they have been there for a week or so. It all just blends in, looks OK (or not), gathers dust and eventually gets boring. It takes a friend with an eye for design or a move or a fit of cleaning (those do come on me once in awhile) to get me thinking about moving furniture or decorative things around. 

My gaze fell on this little mixed-media piece of artwork on our shelf . Anyone who has been to one of our homes over the past six years has seen it. I do not claim to be a fine artist; I always floundered terribly in art class. (Except for my grade 9 art teacher Mr. Debakker who tried to convince me I can do art. He was one of those unconventional, earring-wearing, smoking-during-the-break, soccer-coaching teachers who "got" you. The kind you see in movies standing on desks and taking time for the kid whom no one else sees potential in.) My sister Nancy is an amazing artist (and a lefty, of course). When we visited her in Vancouver over Christmas back in 2007 she tried to gently nudge along the quivering sapling of my creativity by spending an evening creating a mixed media canvas with me. It was somewhere between really fun and pulling teeth. A little of both.

I was a kid with a big imagination (we spent 80% of our childhood dressed up in "olden-days" clothes, shawls, bonnets and long skirts my mom had sewn; I often wished I had been born circa 1816) who loved to write. I wrote reams and reams of stories throughout my childhood, some of which I find to be pretty good when I dig through my old boxes at my parents' farm. But I was always somewhat terrifed of art class. I spoke the words "I can't do it" or "I am not good at art" over my life for as long as I can remember. I shoved my creativity in a box. When I left home at 18 for university, I got too busy with assignments, piles of reading for classes and stalking boys around RJ and Burwash Dining Hall. I stopped writing stories. An angst-filled journal (or ten), but no more "creative writing."

I didn't trust my own ability to create something as we stared at the blank canvas. So Nan lovingly gave my a few tips and starting points, helped me craft some ideas about what is important to me. I was pretty pleased with how the mixed media canvas turned out (hence bringing it back in my suitcase over the 8000+ kilometres that separate us). For the uninitiated, mixed media combines things like paint, gesso, scraps of paper, ink. My sister's trademark is coffee grounds. Yes, there are some coffee grounds there too, to the absolute delight and fascination of my husband. 

On the canvas are a few words: "to write" scrawled in my own penmanship and the imprint of the word "open". There is a bright, yellow object which was supposed to represent hope, the reawakening of dreams after a very dark period of depression that clouded my first year and a half in Germany. I was open for new experiences, I was hoping to renew my love of writing creatively. There are also fragments of text from some old German book my sister had (from who knows where). I identified with the language of my newly adopted country and of my husband, and thus painstakingly cut out a few words from various pages with an exacto knife. Put together they read "eine Frau und ein Baby" "Das ist das Allerschönste auf Erden" [a woman and a baby...that is the most beautiful thing on earth]. And farther to the right "Ich bin froh... daß ich...Bücher schreibe." [I am happy that I write books]

Looking up at this personal piece of artwork while sweating through my crunches, I couldn't help but smile. Smile with thankfulness because all the dreams of that young woman back in 2007 are coming true. That girl seems so much younger, less experienced, less sure of who she is and what she wants. I am 31 now and I am happy to be, chuis bien dans ma peau as we say in Québec [I feel good in my skin]. My thirties have proven, so far, to be calmer and more confident after all the drama of my 20s. 

Back then, the idea of having a child was slowly growing on me, I was becoming "open" for it. Now I have two gorgeous children who make my life so much richer. Holding my babes in my arms, smelling his hair or kissing her bald baby head - it truly is the most beautiful thing.

In 2007 I had no idea where to go career-wise. I was teaching ESL to get by while my husband was in university. Since then I have stumbled into a career as an academic - and I love it. I get to read books for a living and write about them; study, research, teach, and learn. And I am starting to write again (beyond the Ph.D. thesis and sundry academic papers). 

My pastor asked me to help gather the writers within our church. Giving me her encouragement and a platform, a field in which to fertilize the seedling of my creative talent.  A big, open, expansive field in the sunshine where all kinds of seeds can be planted, where all of our sprouts can grow up together into an abundant crop. Every day I am discovering another hidden poet or journaller among us; the chef who writes poetry on his breaks, the teenage-girl who writes the beautiful letters. They're all welcome in this field. We can pull out the weeds around each other, make way for the healing rains and let the wind of creativity shake our branches. As our roots plunge down deeper and our stems get stronger, we'll start to bear fruit. And we'll fill a feasting table with the fruits of our creativity, right in the middle of this field, a heavy-laden table for others to sit down and partake.

Why does our church need writers?

All of life is permeated by Story. Each individual has a Story, and each of these stories is woven into the greater tapestry of humanity. The human Story. By unearthing and telling the Stories unfurling around us, we can send an arrow into the hearts even of strangers, strangers to the church, even into the hearts of people scattered across the globe. People who will say, “You too? Me too! I thought I was the only one.” In that realization and identification with one another, doors are opened, arms are uncrossed, and walls come tumbling down brick by brick.

All of life is Story.

And permeating it all is God’s narrative, how He is wooing and sending and saving us. His great redemption Story is pulsating beneath all of our stories, giving life-blood and breath. He chose to speak to us through a Story, an actual written down book.  His words. Living-breathing-sharp-poignant- marrow-rendering-mighty-freedom-giving Story written down in language humans can comprehend. Sacred Word. Divine Authorship. His Word is the Grand Story, the metanarrative for all of life.

The Bible says that Jesus is the Author of life. He is the great Author, from whose pen every word that is True and Good and Right has streamed forth. He is the Author of every genre. Love Story. Tragedy. Comedy. Mystery. Passion. Suspense. Adventure. Redemption.  God is an Author and so too am I. Telling the stories of His goodness to me. His righteousness and love and redemption in my own life. He is an Author of second-chances, forgiveness, and adventures beyond my greatest hopes. I tell stories to reveal, I hope, more of Him and less of me. I help to tell the stories of those who cannot speak for themselves or cannot find the words. That’s why I write.

That’s why our church and The Church need writers. Who will tell the Stories?

The wee hours

Often, for me, the wee hours are the productive hours. 

The midnight grove where thoughts, inspiration and clarity crop up like so much dense foliage, hosta and lily of the valley, green and verdant, crowding in on each other in the cool damp shade of night. My soul is awake with possibilities, all synapses firing, shooting stars across the projection space of my mind. I should be in bed; I should be "getting enough sleep." But when the babes finally lie still, their heavy little chests rising and falling in the innocence of sleep, their fluttering hands quieted and chattering lips silenced, I revel in the quiet. I cannot succumb to sleep when there is so much to THINK, to write, to create. So I tiptoe to my desk in the darkness, sit under the 3/4 moon keeping me company through the skylight. 

And I write.