It’s a beautiful spring day here in the Bay Area, a time to appreciate the beauty of the natural world as it is reborn each year, giving us a good greening before the dry season turns the grasses brown.
I too feel reborn, as I always do after Easter and Resurrection Day. One of the glorious aspects of the Christian life is that we are always being reborn, as we confess, repent, and are forgiven again and again. We do not carry the weight of our human failings on our fragile shoulders. Christ carries it, his gift to you and me.
My novel in progress is now sitting with my first editor (will have numerous ones this time, I believe!). With many other challenges in my life this month, it took carefully scheduling to finish the draft, but thanks be to God the draft was drafted and winged its way to the East Coast to get to know another writer/editor besides myself. Funny thing about manuscripts – they can be quite demanding. So The Music of the Mountain left home to fly away to finishing school and will have many stories to tell when it/she/he returns, how she became finely finished, perfectly polished, and who knows, actually readable.
It is said that when writers send their manuscripts out into the wide wide world it is like sending a child away to school. At some point, we just say, okay, fly. But don’t forget who created you! Still we think of all the changes and additions we still need to make – create another plot line, another character, another setup and payoff, another scene, another dialog. That’s when I tell myself, breathe, breathe, breathe the name of Jesus.
I suppose God is rather like that (Dorothy Sayers wrote about that in The Mind of the Maker). He made us, gave us free will, and eternally desires that we love him as much as he loves us. He wants to be with each one of us, 24/7, loving, choosing, directing. But we must invite him in. Sometimes I need reminding.
That is what the Church does for us. Reminds us how much God loves us. Reminds us how we are resurrected with him.
We had a lovely annual Church Synod last week, another extended family gathering of the faithful which is one part reunion, one part inspiration, one part meeting and greeting, one part fellowship, and many parts encouragement. We live in a challenging time for the Church – any church – a hostile time in which we must not throw pearls before swine, must choose charitably, desire dutifully, and trust Our Lord completely. We are the music of the mountain (plot spoiler), each note, each hymn, each concerto. We all play our part.
And so I sing today’s Collect, making a chorus of the words, “Grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise so that… our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found.”
And so I sing today’s Epistle, James 1:17+, one of the most exquisitely beautiful verses of Holy Scripture: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down form the Father of lights, which whom i no variableness, neither shadow of turning…”
In our lives, we have momentary visions of God, of Eternity, of beauty we nearly cannot bear, so exquisite is it. So we breathe it in in the name of Jesus, just as Jesus breathed the Spirit upon the disciples. And as we live, and learn to love, the beauty of the world enters our hearts and minds and souls, to remake us, to finish us, to bring us one step closer to Heaven and Eternity.
Thinking about my draft again, and all the stories I didn’t tell, all the loves I wanted to include, all the mysteries and miracles of life that are stacked in folders all around me that didn’t make the cut (there’s still time I tell them). At the end of the day, what I have not packed into these chapters is huge and daunting and waiting to be included. Alas, I tell them, sometimes less is more…?
But then I know these glories of research have sculpted me, made me grow, fed me with Eternity, right here in my little bookroom, the shelves pouring books upon me, sent forth by my cat, Angel.
Did I mention my novel is about books? Lots of them.
Thanks be to God.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 