Years ago, I left the Word Shop at 3:00 armed with a stack of flyers. My plan was to post them in local churches. A half-dozen churches later, I realized that late Wednesday afternoon was not a good time for visiting churches. No one was home.
On Tuesday, our Illuminated Journaling course met at The Abbey Coffee Lounge in an old brick Presbyterian Church. This church recently had joined forces with Vintage Faith, a young gathering headed by Dan Kimball, who wrote The Emerging Church and They Like Jesus but not the Church. The coffee lounge was artsy, cozy, open, interesting, beautiful. I suppose at one time it had been a boring church hall. Of all the churches we've visited on Tuesday afternoons during our summer church series, I felt the least like an intruder at The Abbey. We talked, wrote and scribbled in our journals; a scone and latte' at the ready. By the next week, two people had made plans to take friends and family there. This church has made a live and comfortable place for the public to intersect with them during the week. What a gift!
Certainly one of the inspirations for The Word Shop was to create a Christ centered space open to anyone. Sometimes we succeed--as this recent email attests:
"Your shop is one of my favorite places to just stop in. The reason is that you are so fun to talk with and the shop has fun items like CD's and journals as well as all the books you are so good at finding for us. You offer everyone a cup of tea and great conversation. I love the way the Lord uses you as a drop in center." ~ Michelle
When my children were small and on the edge of being trusted alone at our little strip mall, it helped that we knew Richard, the owner of Teddy-Bear Toys. Richard coached little league, knew the boys names and provided a 'safe place' should they run into any trouble. After a while Toys R Us came to town and Teddy Bear Toys disappeared. In a funny way, even though we live in a 24-7 retail world, often no one is home in the business sector either.
As our communities drift from the personal to the corporate, from local to global, let's take on the challenge of finding ways make ourselves available to each other--not just through 140 characters on twitter, but face to face and heart to heart, in our daily, local lives.
"A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man. -Arnold Toynbee
The deadline for The Word Shop Publishing Project is coming up: August 10. We already have received a nice stack of manuscripts replete with an astonishing variety of styles, genre's, subjects and interesting notes on the writers' inspiration and process. At our last meeting the publishing group spun through possible titles: Inside the Writer's Mind, Working Titles, Writing from The Word Shop Workshops, This is Terrible, Works on Words, Words at Work, In Company, Creative Interludes, A compendium of Word Shop Writing. Come Pen Deum. Feel free to add in your brilliant idea. And if you haven't submitted your 500, 2000, or 7000 words yet, NOW IS THE TIME.
"It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one." -Honore deBalzac
Judy and Sheila brought the same devotional to the Family Camp Literary Party (book that brought you closer to the Lord): My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. Inspired, I found the copy LaPrelle gave me in 87, blew off the dust and put it on my night stand. I'll read a page before I go to sleep. Both copies that I brought for the book table at camp were sold, but another one came in yesterday. $4 Pb. I think next year the Family Camp Literary Party will be any good book you that you will have read during the past year. Start reading now. (How's that for squeezing multiple tenses into one sentence?)
Bits and pieces from Family Camp Talks:
"a familiar stranger..." ~Steven
"The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is stress." ~Shannon
"He wasn't the sharpest cheese on the cracker." ~John-David
You can catch a picture of part of the Family Camp musicians on my facebook page--but only if you are a friend.
When I pulled out my flute to brush up for Family Camp, I promised myself that I would not let it lie noteless month after month for another year. O flute, how could I have forsaken you? I must have regular musical gatherings this year. Hence we are having Bread and Jam sometime in August. This will be a bring your instrument, voice, clapping hands, cool song, fall in and sing praises event. I'm thinking late afternoon with dinner thereafter--assuming you bring something to eat. Most likely it will be at our house. Let me know if you want the Bread and Jam details.
"I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread." ~Bill Cosby
Since I missed June's Mystery Literary Party, I thought I'd read Moonstone by Wilkie Collins for July's 19th Century Literature Party. Moonstone, written in the mid 1800's is the first full length detective novel. In it, several key players write a first person narrative telling what happened from their point of view. The only negative narrator is an evangelical spinster; a self righteous, prudish, insensitive woman, who showers books and tracts on unwilling recipients. At least she doesn't run a bookstore. I tell you this just incase you thought that particular character was a modern invention.
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." ~Mark Twain
August's Literary Party is Westerns. This is Rita's fault, who said, "Since I am going to be gone, why don't you do westerns?" I thought I'd read a Louis L'Amour; he's the most asked for author in the Western genre. I scoured the store and only came up with one: a leather bound copy of West from Singapore. Turns out that one is stories set in the Pacific at the outbreak of WWII. Sigh. I don't suppose Willa Cather would count. Maybe Peace Like a River? Janette Oke? Third Friday, 1:30.
"You can't always sit in your corner of the forest and wait for people to come to you... you have to go to them sometimes." ~A.A. Milne
If you want to sit in The Word Shop's corner of the forest for a few hours every week or two, please let me know. The sands of time are shifting our volunteers leaving holes in the changing of the guard. You need to be in relationship with The Boss, and like both solitude and conversing with an odd assortment of people. Otherwise it's a simple matter of unlocking the door and seeing who walks in.
"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true." ~Charles Dickens
Be brave and true.
Blessings
Alliee +