Now that April is gone…

I guess it’s finally time to update this blog. I’m in the middle of a third rewrite of the Jezebel novel, REIGN, and don’t have much energy leftover for blogs.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, I really do run out of things to say at the end of a day, especially when I’ve been writing. April was a particularly overwhelming month, however, and I wanted to post a couple of happenings:

I helped lead a two-day spiritual retreat at a homeless shelter. These women described themselves as recovering “crack whores,” or “tricks.” That broke my heart. As I looked out at their faces, so weary and anxious for inspiration, I was deeply moved. What a thin line separates our worlds, really. There is no “Us” and “Them.”

To offer a little bit of comfort and hope was a real privilege and honor. That’s the best part of being a writer. I have had such incredible opportunities to sit with people of so many walks of life: practicing witches, homeless women and recovering addicts,  rabbis and atheists and conservative Christians.  I am more deeply in love today with the message of peace and hope and power that Scripture offers, and am also convinced that to live a life of Us versus Them opens the door to suffering.

That lesson was driven home two weeks later when I chaperoned a group of fifth graders to a Holocaust museum. The violent images and heartbreaking relics, such as the barbed wire fence from a concentration camp, left many of the kids in tears. The evil was overwhelming, as was the sense that the world had failed the persecuted ones by failing to identify with them.

April was an incredible month in many ways, and now I am looking forward to May. I can’t wait for school to be out, for coconut-scented sunscreen and watermelon by the pool. I can’t wait to turn in REIGN and move on to my next project.

I can’t wait to see what comes next!