I DON'T Want To Be Left Behind

(Image: Amazon.com, link disabled)

Like a 2:00 rainstorm on a Florida afternoon, an unexplained cloudburst of tears threatens as I close the book on Brenda Peterson's memoir, "I Want To Be Left Behind."

Its catchy, irreverent title--at least for someone who understands its connotation--indeed caught my eye as I passed by a library shelf weeks ago. Me and my curiosity couldn't resist.

Eschatalogical Switzerland

I actually wrote this piece a month or two back. As you will see in today's and tomorrow's posts, the topic is obviously occupying some space in my thinking (you have to be sleeping under a rock not to have some awareness of all this!), the reasons why becoming clearer tomorrow.  But lest I leave the impression that I'm consumed, it just so happens that my current interest in posting coincides with the current Mayan madness. Correlation does not necessarily equal cause, remember... So here's my meager contribution.

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I have many and varied bed fellows these days. That doesn’t mean I’m sleeping around. It means that among my friends are people who view things very differently. These differences are never seen any clearer than in

Medical Center Malfunction

I’m really ticked at my doctor’s office this morning. I raced to be there at the appointed time, 9 a.m., which is nothing to normal people, but to a night owl writer/musician is a feat of considerable magnitude. So at my customary two minutes late I checked in. 

“Oh. You were supposed to be here at 8:45,” she said.

Political Preferences

I rarely state my political preferences. That doesn't mean I don't have them. Yet I have discovered that those who have views opposite my own have, on many occasions, substantive things to say. (Imagine that... !)

It makes me wonder how much closer we might come to effective solutions for the challenges we all face if we actually listened to one another instead of screaming into each other's faces from the bottom of the well--which so far has produced little in the way of rescue.

This quote by John Wesley sums up my attitude about the whole affair and is my favorite contribution to the 2012 political campaign so far. It was posted by a 30 something pastor, a friend of mine who, thank God, gets it.

One Call Away: A Memoir... by Brenda Warner

“When people approach me, they often start the conversation in the same way. ‘Are You Kurt Warner’s wife?’ These days, in answer, I hold out my hand and say, ‘My name is Brenda.’” In this gritty account of the wife of the former NFL quarterback who led three teams to the Super Bowl, Brenda Warner captures that same spirit in writing. She extends a hand,