We wake, if ever we wake at all, to mystery.~Annie Dillard

In 2008 I read the book: The Sacred Romance - Drawing Closer to the Heart of God ~by Curtis and Eldredge I was already thinking that our lives, each individuals story, must be that place where God speaks to us. I think the relationship is personal, intimate. I think the activities, distractions, the noise of life pulls and or lures us away from that relationship. Because we, or in this case I, am too busy to listen, I miss that relationship that God had in mind when he thought of me (yeah, I think He pays attention on an individual level). These authors encouragement is to "listen to our lives" and quote Frederick Buechner's advice:

"If God speaks to us at all other than through such official channels as the Bible and the church, then I think that he speaks to us largely through what happens to us. . . if we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and hope,if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we come to recognize, beyond all doubt, that, however faintly we may hear him, he is indeed speaking to us,..." (Now and Then)

I remembered wrong the other day when I said Phillip Yancey used arrows in an analogy. That analogy is used in this book - The Sacred Romance. As I thumbed through it yesterday I came across this line: "I remember feeling a sharp pain in my chest that I silenced with cold anger. I thought what a fool I had been all these years to believe in (fill in the blank). I know now I placed that last Arrow in my heart that day and shoved it cleanly through. I did it to kill the tears of mourning inside that would have insisted that there was something I had lost." In the margin - and what caught my eye yesterday - I had drawn a little sketch of an arrow. and wrote this beside it: faith feathers the arrow,becomes a prayer. A prayer for me by me. Heal my heart.

Elie Wiesel writes that "God created man because he loves stories." These authors use that quote and note afterwards: So if we're going to find the answer to the riddle of the earth - and of our own existence - we'll find it in a story.

Well - alright, I'm not going to write on this anymore. My FI just called and said today's flight has been moved up and I need to get to thinking in that direction. This book is a little touchy feely - but it is a good book. My husband didn't like it because he had already decided he didn't like the author. I went in to the book with a closed mind, but ended up ... writing in the margins.