Parts of Speaking Publishing

I am heartsick about the floods in Nepal. God is there, in the flood and the fire, the song goes. This is a test of faith. We do not see God's presence there as that broken and melted glacier and mud multiply and tumble down the Himalayas, swiping at everything in its path. What can we do? Watching videos is too much.  

Below I have posted the lyrics to a song we sung last Sunday. It is by Michael W. Smith. I am going to respond to it, but drop down and read them first.  I am a modern woman who does not dismiss that modernity is very young in terms of the span of history. So I am conscious that everything cannot be explained by scientific means or "our neural wiring." There is a spirit world that can affect us if we allow our minds to open to it. That is why we need a better theology of the Holy Spirit.  I have felt attacks by evil unseen beings lately. I am not proud to admit that. They tempt me to do fearful things (no examples) and to doubt God at a basic, existential level. I do not think this is unusual. Nor do I believe it does not have a chemical component either, or in my case, what I have inputted into my senses. Today I do not feel this oppression, but last week I did, for some reason.  It happened when we were singing this song. Some will say it was not a demon; I would tend t...

 The house I bought in 2021, while I was separated from my husband, is very much the kind of house I always wanted, with some exceptions. The kitchen is a bit cramped and the back deck is not covered or screened in, but these are minor inconveniences. What I do like is that the central point is the spacious and welcoming dining room, and that the house can be divided into four parts and even separated by doors, or five if the deck is counted. These four are the bedrooms/bathrooms area, the “parlor” and entrance hall, the dining room and kitchen, and the 25 X 25 foot family room. Yes, it is huge room and it is my space, where I study, nap, watch television, write, and sew. By my makeshift desk, really an old table bought at a yard sale, in this family room is a large window, five by five feet, through which I can watch birds gather at the two feeders on the other side of the deck. Now that I am retired, I have found that the best part of this new phase is the slowly paced morn...

 Quoting Gil Crouch, Joel Miller writes: “The idea of the gift economy is fundamental in how we create social bonds, form and maintain relationships, deep or just transactional, such as with a brand through marketing activities like advertising,” says Crouch. “Writing poems, sonnets, novels, non-fiction books, articles, blog posts, all are forms of this moral and social gift-giving. The writer creates a book and publishes it because they want to tell a story. When we read the book, we are reciprocating the gift by reading it.” A piece of writing is a pact between the writer and reader. It’s a contract, and we feel betrayed or cheated when we discover the writer didn’t invest their work with the effort, intent, or skill we expected. It’s like buying a bag of chips and finding out the package is mostly air. We feel ripped off. Deepening this dynamic, Ruth Gaskovski and Peco recently discussed the “I” of the creator. “There is an ‘I’ behind a work of art,” they write. Ruth mentions ...

 The recent news--or should I say, the recent news we are allowed to know about or are fed through our algorithms because they pluck the strings of our appetites--seems to be about suicides.  Jason Arday committed suicide after much of his fraudulent, or autism-induced behavior, was exposed and he was discharged from Cambridge. Very perplexing all around. Hayden Panettiere, a young actress, was found deceased in her apartment. She had lived a successful (as an actress) and deeply sad (as a young person and mother) life. Very troubling.  Lindsey Clancey is on trial for the killing of her three pre-school children three years ago, by strangulation. She tried to commit suicide after the act and was found unconscious outside of the window from which she had jumped. She is now in a wheelchair as a paraplegic. She confessed to the killing but under what might seem to be defensible circumstances related to postpartum psychosis. Extraordinarily tragic and the hardest for me to fa...

Good Substack article by Joel Miller on ditching a book considered "great" when it's not working for you.    https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/i-quit-one-of-literatures-greatest-novels-questions-for-when-a-book-just-doesnt-work-for-you?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=564548&post_id=210823622&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2pwl1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email Finishing [a book] is a strange concept to begin with if you pause and think about it. Do we ever finish a book? What does that mean? Think Augustine’s Confessions or Montaigne’s Essays , Middlemarch , and The Brothers Karamazov . Do you finish the Bible? Books are tools for thinking and feeling, sometimes praying and other deeper movements of the soul. Do we complete that just because the pages end? Is reaching the end the end? And to pick up the word’s other meaning, is it even the point?   He is talking specifically about Tristam Shandy , which I have ...