My time is consumed with so many details that the efforts I really seek get pushed into the back row. For example, I'd like to add something on my blog about my books, published at lulu.com. My fiction, or almost fiction, is Gather with the Saints, a collection of stories as told by a 12-year-old Baptist preacher's daughter. She tells of the rather bizarre funerals and deaths that occur in her home town of Wheeler, NC. Most have a nugget of real life, as told me by my colleagues in ministry, but then there are the ones that come solely out of my imagination. One, told in three parts, is the tragic balance to those others which contain a note of humor. The book is available online and also through retail book sellers.

I also have a book that comes out of my dissertation on the grief process. I added a fantasy story and narratives given me by others about signs from nature or elsewhere that relay the message of comfort: their loved one who has died is all right. The book, Signs of Hope:Messages for the Grieving, is for sale online but not in bookstores.

My collection of poems, Field Water, went through four revisions and was not for sale but for gifts to friends. Now I have decided to offer it for sale, also through lulu. Another book, for sale through lulu, is a collection of sermons delivered during the fall of 2008, Preacher's Dozen and a few more.

You can find these at www.lulu.com, by putting my name in the search window. If you find something you think worth reading, pass on the good word to your friends. I will be working at marketing these books in new ways soon.

I am going to copy excerpts from a recent blog I have on our Fellowship Presbyterian Church blogsite. It speaks to an important issue we face in these times.

Hospitality

Recently I attended a day-long Legislative Seminar sponsored by our NC Council of Churches and learned of the almost unsolvable concerns of immigrants, especially Latinos, who are given so little in terms of a welcome from the general public. We enjoy their labors but we don’t seem to enjoy their presence, judging by the efforts to get as many as possible back to their home countries, however that may be accomplished – either legally or illegally. We are reluctant to educate them or train them or raise their economic situation, all of which would in the long run make them contributing members of our society. I think we have a different standard when we read our scriptures, which call for us to “welcome the stranger.” We too once were strangers, or our ancestors were, for all were immigrants to this country except for the native peoples, and they too may come from immigrant stock of several millenia ago.

St. Benedict made hospitality a prime standard for his group of monks. As Sister Joan Chittister's commentary on the Rule of Benedict, notes about this matter of hospitality: “Hospitality in a culture of violence and strangers and anonymity has become the art of making good connections at good cocktail parties. We don't talk in elevators, we don't know the security guard's name, we don't invite even the neighbors in to the sanctuary of our selves. Their children get sick and their parents die and all we do is watch the comings and goings from behind heavy blinds. Benedict wants us to let down the barriers of our hearts so that this generation does not miss accompanying the innocent to Calvary as the last one did. Benedict wants us to let down the barriers of our souls so that the God of the unexpected can come in.” She adds, “ . . . hospitality is clearly meant to be more than an open door. It is an acknowledgement of the gifts the stranger brings.”

Isn't it time “to let down the barriers of our souls” and let the God of the unexpected enter in?

Have a Great Day!

I'm a curmudgeon at times. Especially when things aren't going well in my life. Then as I leave the drive-up window at the bank, or check out at the grocery store, and I hear from the person waiting on me, "Have a great day!" I almost puke on them. Instead, I simply comment that I'll be satisfied with a plain old mediocre day. Usually, the look I receive is one of blank incomprehension. The last time I pulled that, I started pushing my cart toward the door. "Have a great day!" called out the check-out clerk.

So what would a "great day" be like for me? It's hard to imagine, since they seldom arrive, but I think it would be to be convinced I am part of the bigger picture -- that my words and actions hold meaning for at least one person -- that I make a difference somehow -- for the good, of course. At my age, 75, it would be gratifying to believe that such is really really true.

Another criteria might be to know that a poem, a book, an essay that I have written will be published or win a prize or be recognized in some way. I have several books published online at lulu.com (just click my name and you'll find them) and it would really be exciting to find out that there are readers out there who want to read what I've written.

A great day might also include the possibility of bringing in at least a slight income these days of economic crashes and uncertainties. Or a great day might be one in which I finish a sermon with several days to spare before Sunday, in order to have time for revisions or even total rewrites.

A great day could possibly include the fact that someone reads this, my first blog other than what I do for our church website . . . So I'll close this with the hope that any readers of this will have a Great Day -- today or tomorrow . . .